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SINGLE 

REELS 

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Books by 

ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE 


Dwellers in Arcady 

From Van-Dweller to Commuter 

In One Man’s Life 

Life of Thomas Nast 

Lure of the Mediterranean 

Mark Twain, a Biography 

A Short Life of Mark Twain 

Mark Twain’s Letters 

Moments with Mark Twain 

Peanut 

The Tent Dwellers 

The Car That Went Abroad 

Single Reels 


HARPER & BROTHERS 

Publishers 












] 


SINGLE REELS 


By 

Albert Bigelow Paine 

Author of “The Car That Went 
Abroad, ’ “Dwellers in Arcady ” 
“The Tent Dwellers” 


Illustrated 


/ 



HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 













\ 


SINGLE REELS 


Copyright, 1923 
By Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the U.SA. 


First Edition 
D-X 


% 



MAY-7 23 

©CU705323 




TO 

THOMAS BUCKLIN WELLS 

WHO AS EDITOR OF HARPER’S MAGA¬ 
ZINE WAS COERCED INTO READING 
MOST OF THESE STORIES BEFORE 
THEY APPEARED IN PRINT 




















CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Mrs. Tumulty’s Hat. ! 

The Toy of Fate. 

Murphy’s Kitchen.26 

A Thwarted Pygmalion.36 

An Ordeal of Art.48 

Englishman’s Luck.59 

A Knave of Keys.66 

Reforming Julius.80 

Thoroughbreds for Three Days.89 

The Don’t Hurry Club.98 

Being a Landlord n .122 

The Meanness of Pinchett.136 

An Excursion in Memory.147 

The United Workman.157 

Reforming Verny.170 

An Adventure in Decoration.184 

Northwest by North.195 

The Great Roundtop Vegetable Drive.207 

Reserved Seats.219 

Getting Square with the Laundry.230 

Sunday Morning Recreation.240 


Mr. Rabbit’s Home Brew (A Bedtime Reel).249 


\ 


v 






















\ 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


“Oh, My Hat! My New Hat! Oh, Catch It for 
Me, Somebody, Ple-e-ase!”. Frontispiece 

I Met Romance in the Person of Lavinia Tubbs Facing p. 14 

“Poetry,” I Said. He Reached for Something— 

Something Heavy, I Judge. “26 

Turning His Eyes Upward in Adoration ... “36 

I Had a Feeling of Being at a Private Wild 
West Show. “48 

The Farmers Seemed to Enjoy the Joke ... “60 

For a Man of His Race, Julius Was a Lamb . “80 

It Was a Pretty Little Bungalow Affair ... “ 122 


You’d Have Thought His Neck Was at Stake . . 

A Large, Highly Colored Lady, with a Small 
Near-sighted Dog. 

“Oh, but You Might Give Us a Check, You Know!” 
Said Miss Mittens. 

I Could See That She Gasped a Little When We 
Spread It upon the Bed and Backed Away for 
Inspection. 

“Mutiny! Mutiny!” He Shrieked. “Northwest 
by North, and Lighten the Ship!”. 

Some Rumor Had Come to Him of My Declining 
Health and He Had Come to See About It . 

We Got Up Fairly Early and Made the Sand¬ 
wiches . 

“ It’s Coming Out in Quarts ”. 


« 


a 


u 


136 

148 

170 


“ 184 
“ 196 
“ 208 


u 


220 
Page 235 


vu 























SINGLE 

REELS 





SINGLE REELS 


MRS. TUMULTY’S HAT 

AS Mrs. Tumulty rounded the cape at Seventy- 
third Street and Broadway the gust caught 
her, and in the same instant she felt her hat and 
her head parting company. She grabbed wildly. 

“Oh, my hat! My new hat! Oh, catch it for 
me, somebody, ple-e-ase!” 

Mrs. Tumulty’s voice shrilled with agony, for 
it was, indeed, her new hat—a very large and 
expensive hat, which only the day before Mr. 
Tumulty, with very excellent taste in such matters, 
had really selected, as well as paid for, in celebra¬ 
tion of his having won the Clayton Will case, 
which meant a pretty nice fee and new clients. 
Mrs, Tumulty swiftly remembered these things, 
now, as she ran, her gaze directed to the sky, 
which seemed to be her hat’s general destination. 

“Oh, oh!” wailed Mrs. Tumulty, “I’m going to 
lose my new hat that Roscoe bought me, and he’ll 
blame me so! He says I never pin my hats on 
well, and I suppose I don’t. Oh, just look at the 
crazy thing, now !” 

Mrs. Tumulty had a following, by this time, of 
two small boys, a fat man, and a red-haired delivery 

i 



SINGLE REELS 


clerk. The hat had suddenly abandoned its eccen¬ 
tric skyward flight, and made a straight dive 
downward, as if determined to perish under flying 
wheels. The bereft lady and her panting brigade 
pulled up suddenly to face the worst. Another 
instant, and that beautiful creation of flowers and 
feathers would be a maimed and blighted thing. 
The street was fairly full of motor cars, and the 
hat seemed aimed at the very center of the flying 
mass. But then Mrs. Tumulty gave a little cry, 
and her bodyguard a sort of general whoop. 
Something quite different had happened. At the 
very instant of its final plunge an open touring 
car, with two men in the front seat and nobody 
in the back, was timed by fate to be exactly under 
it. Instead of plunging to the ruin of the street, 
Mrs. Tumulty’s hat seemed to right itself and 
settle very gently, even if suddenly, to the floor 
of the empty tonneau, and so went gliding away, 
the two gentlemen in the front seat quite unsus¬ 
picious of any trouble behind—that is to say, 
ahead. 

“Six-eight-three-one-six! I got the number!” 
yelled one of the small boys; “ six-eight-three-one- 
six! You’ll get it, all right. All you’ve got to do 
is-” 

But Mrs. Tumulty was running again, as if she 
had some notion that she could overhaul a car 
that was at least doubling the speed limit for 
motor vehicles. Her following fell away from her, 
but, by some inspiration, Mrs. Tumulty kept 

2 


on. 



MRS. TUMULTY’S HAT 


A traffic policeman waved and called to the flying, 
bareheaded lady, but she did not heed him. Her 
eyes were glued to the gray open car, now swiftly 
dwindling into the perspective, two blocks away. 
And then, oh, joy! one of the men held out an arm, 
the gray car slackened and rounded into the curb. 
Mrs. Tumulty, who ten years before had been on 
the track team of her school, threw herself into 
top gear, and persons stepped aside to let her 
pass. The speeding lady did not notice them. 
She saw only that a man got out of the gray car 
and that an instant later, when she was still half 
a block away, the said car wheeled back into the 
traffic, turned a corner, and was gone. 

The slender and rather anemic-looking gentle¬ 
man who had descended from the gray car was 
about to pass through the entrance of a tall office 
building when a bareheaded, panting lady, with a 
very red face and flying hair, laid her hand on his 
arm. He took one look, and would have disap¬ 
peared very suddenly if the excited person had 
held him a bit less firmly. 

“Oh,” she said, “can’t you have your car come 
back? My—my hat’s in it! My hat that Roscoe 
gave me!” 

The slender gentleman answered rather nerv¬ 
ously, but with decision. 

“Madam,” he said, “there—there is s-some 
mistake. There was no hat—that is to say—no— 
no lady’s hat in the car I was in. Try to—to calm 
yourself, madam.” 


3 



SINGLE REELS 


“Oh, but my hat is in it. I saw it go in myself. 
I didn’t have it pinned on well and the wind blew 
it off, and it fell right in the back of your car. I 
know it was yours, for I kept up and never lost 
sight of it. Oh, please telephone, or something.” 

The anemic gentleman reflected. 

“You are a—a good runner, madam, to have 
kept up. Jack Nettleton has been fined twice for 
speeding. It is his car, not mine. He will be 
home presently, I judge, and I will telephone to 
see if he has—that is—what he may have in the 
back of his car, and if you will leave your address, 
madam, I am sure he will return your—that is— 
any strange apparel he may find there.” 

“ But it is just a hat—a large, new hat, and can’t 
you telephone right away? I’m so anxious! Or 
give me the number and I’ll do it.” 

The nervous gentleman hesitated. 

“But—but I think Mr. Nettleton is hardly there 
yet, and you see, if Mrs. Nettleton should answer 
—well—I—you—explanations by telephone, you 
know—and Mrs. Nettleton is—is inclined to be 
a—a little, that is to say, quick in her conclusions, 
don’t you see, and—and Jack is a good deal of a 
favorite—and a—lady’s hat in the back of the car, 
and the—apparent—improbability of the ” 

“Oh, yes, of course—I never thought of that. 
I wouldn’t telephone myself for the world, but 
you could call up, and, if she answered, ask to 
have Mr. Nettleton call you when he comes, 
couldn’t you?” 


4 







MRS. TUMULTY’S HAT 


“Y-yes, suppose so. I—I’ll consider that. I 
will consider what seems best to do under the— 
I may say—rather peculiar circumstances, and I 
am sure—that is, I think, you will get your— 
eh—property, madam, in due time. I am a 
—a mining engineer, and accustomed to—to 
—hazardous undertakings. Now—the—the ad¬ 
dress, if you please, madam.” 

Mrs. Tumulty hastily dug from the depths of 
a small handbag a bit of pasteboard, thanked 
him, and, signaling a taxi, was presently on her 
way home. 

“If I can only get it again before Roscoe comes 
home,” she groaned, as she settled back in the 
seat. “He would be so cross about it!” 

But fate had arranged the matter in its own 
way. At that very moment Mr. Roscoe Tumulty 
was sitting in Mrs. Jack Nettleton’s drawing-room, 
only waiting for Mr. Nettleton’s return to discuss 
the terms of a joint will which Mr. Tumulty was 
to draw for the Nettletons prior to their de¬ 
parture on a West Indian and South American 
cruise. 

“Mr. Nettleton and myself have decided to 
make a joint will,” she was saying, “and to have 
you draw it. Of course, whatever belongs to one 
of us belongs to both. We are as one in every¬ 
thing, and always shall be; but if anything should 
happen, you know, and one never can tell on a 
voyage, these days, when everything is so very un¬ 
certain, and if anything should happen—to me, of 

5 




SINGLE REELS 


course—I should want Jack—Mr. Nettleton, I 
mean—to have everything, you know.” 

Mr. Tumulty nodded. 

: ‘A will is the proper protection,” he said, “a 
good will — correctly drawn, I mean. Mrs. 
Tumulty and myself are, as you say, also one in 
everything—one in thought, effort, earthly pos¬ 
sessions—for which reason we have long since 
made a joint will.” 

“Yes,” epigrammed Mrs. Nettleton, walking to 
the window, “the more people belong the more 
their belongings belong. My husband should be 
here by this time. He had some business in 

Yonkers, but was to be back by eleven. He-” 

Mrs. Nettleton was here interrupted by a muffled 
ring from an adjoining room. “Excuse me,” she 
said—“the telephone.” 

The one-sided conversation that came through 
the door to Mr. Tumulty did not, at the moment, 
seem important. 

“Hello! Yes—yes, this is Mr. Nettleton’s 
house. No— Mrs. Nettleton. Mr. Nettleton is 
not here. Yes, we expect him soon, but he will be 
quite busy when he comes; can you give me a mes¬ 
sage for him? Oh, I see; rather important and 
private. Well, I’m his wife, and can take any 
message. You prefer to have him call you. Oh, 
very well; and who is this? I see; his friend, Mr. 
Lawson —one-six-two-five Columbus. Thank you!” 

To Mr. Tumulty it seemed that Mrs. Nettleton 
hung up the receiver with rather a jerky motion, 

6 




MRS. TUMULTY’S HAT 


and she may have appeared just the least bit 
ruffled as she entered the room and walked to the 
window. But an instant later she turned, quite 
cheerfully. 

“Mr. Nettleton is just coming; I am sorry we 
have kept you waiting, Mr. Tumulty.” 

Declaring that the slight delay was of no con¬ 
sequence, Mr. Tumulty himself stepped to the 
window in time to see a gray open car draw up 
to the curb. A moment later the single occupant 
had jumped out and run diagonally across the street. 

“Oh, dear!” fussed Mrs. Nettleton, “now he has 
gone over to the drug store after cigars. He 
always forgets them until he gets right to the 
door, and it takes forever to get waited on over 
there. I’ll just step out and hurry him in.” 

She went, in spite of Mr. Tumulty’s protest, 
and a moment later he saw her standing by the 
car. He politely left the window, then, and took 
a turn down the room. Ten seconds later Mrs. 
Nettleton burst in, alone. She held one hand 
behind her, and was visibly excited. The reader 
will recall that Mrs. Nettleton was inclined to be 
rather quick in her conclusions. 

“Mr. Tumulty,” she demanded, with forced 
calm, “are you a divorce lawyer, too?” 

“Why—madam—I—yes, madam; but why?” 

“Well, I think it’s very likely we’ll change that 
joint will into divorce papers.” 

“But, my dear Mrs. Nettleton—I am at a loss. 
I don’t grasp the idea.” 


7 


SINGLE REELS 


“You will, in a minute. I went out to meet my 
husband, as you know. While waiting, I stepped 
to the side of the car, thinking no evil, and looked 
in. What do you suppose I found there, Mr. 
Tumulty? What do you suppose?” 

But Mr. Tumulty’s legal mind was not given 
to supposing. He shook his head, dazed. 

“I found a hat, Mr. Tumulty—a woman s hat— 
in my husband's car —a costly hat—such as I have 
never felt able to wear myself; left in there by 
mistake, no doubt—and by whom? That’s what 
you must find out, Mr. Tumulty, and draw the 
papers.” 

“But, my dear madam, he may be quite inno¬ 
cent. Perhaps it is a hat he has brought home to 
you, as a present. Only a day or two ago I bought, 
and, indeed, selected, a hat for my wife—quite an 
imposing hat, I may say; and this, also, may be a 
present from-” 

“From Jack Nettleton? Never! He doesn’t 
know the first thing about hats, and wouldn’t dare. 
Besides, he always has said he liked small hats— 
and look at that !' 9 

Mrs. Nettleton snatched forth the hand she had 
been holding behind her, and so brought to view 
a splendid big creation of flowers and feathers, 
apparently not the least the worse for its adven¬ 
ture. Mr. Tumulty took one look, then himself 
seized the offending headgear. 

“Well,” he snorted, “I like that —I do, indeed! 
That? Why, that’s my wife's hat. Her new one 

8 




MRS. TUMULTY’S HAT 


—the one I mentioned—the very one I bought for 
her two days ago. I like that —I do, indeed /” 
And to show how much he liked it, Mr. Tumulty 
repeated his statement several times, with steadily 
increasing emphasis. The door opened iust then, 
and Mr. Jack Nettleton entered. 

“Oh, I’m sorry to be late,” he began, gayly,then 
paused. Something told him that all was not as 
it should be, and the figure of a gentleman whom 
he took to be the legal Mr. Tumulty, holding a 
large and sumptuous hat, was for some reason 
oppressive. He stood staring from one to the 
other, until his wife’s voice brought him to himself 
with a sudden jerk. 

“John Nettleton,” she said, and there was a 
fearful menace in her tones, “Mr. Tumulty and I 
wish you to explain by what means you came by 
that hat.” 

Mr. Nettleton again turned from his wife to 
Mr. Tumulty and the hat, then back to his wife, 
and, getting no light, stared only at the hat, while 
his eyes took on a fixed, glazed expression, as if 
he were losing his mind. 

“Yes, of course,” proceeded Mrs. Nettleton, 
“you can’t speak, confronted by your duplicity. 
Oh, to think-” 

Mr. Nettleton found his voice. 

“Say,” he said, “what is this, anyhow—an 
April fool, or a bad dream ? What do I know about 
that hat? I never saw it before in my life. What 
about it, anyhow?” 


9 



SINGLE REELS 


Mr. Tumulty “took the word,” as the French 
say, replying calmly and judicially, as became one 
who might one day reasonably hope to occupy 
the bench of justice. 

“Mr. Nettleton,” he said, “some few moments 
since, your wife, Mrs. Nettleton, upon going out 
to welcome you, chanced to look into the back of 
the car which stands outside, and has presumably 
been occupied by yourself during the forenoon. 
What was her astonishment to discover there, 
carefully placed on the floor of the tonneau, this 
rather expensive and, I may say, handsome hat. 
Furthermore, it is a hat not strange to me. It is, 
in fact, the identical millinery that two days ago 
I purchased as a gift to my wife. You will under¬ 
stand, therefore, Mr. Nettleton, why Mrs. Nettle- 
ton and myself are naturally disturbed, and con¬ 
sider that an explanation is in order.” 

Mr. Nettleton made no immediate reply, but 
reached out as if to take the hat, and then dropping 
into a chair, sat gazing at it in a fascinated way. 

“Somebody’s playing it on me,” he said at 
last—“that’s the size of it. But who is it, and 
what’s it for? That’s what I want to know.” 

Mrs. Nettleton said in frozen accents: “ Possibly 
you might learn something by calling up your 
friend Mr. Lawson. He telephoned a little while 
ago and left a request that you call him as soon 
as you should arrive—declining to leave a message 
—said his business was important—and private.” 

Mr. Nettleton straightened up. 

io 


MRS. TUMULTY’S HAT 


“Lawson? Sure! Brought him down from 
Yonkers. But it isn’t a joke if it’s Lawson. He 
couldn’t play a joke on anybody. I’ll call him, 
all right.” 

Mr. Nettleton hurried to the next room, and, 
a few moments later, had Mr. Lawson on the 
wire. The end of the conversation which the 
two listeners heard meant very little, being 
confined mainly to “Yes—yes—sure,” and “Of 
course,” but presently Mr. Nettleton hung up 
the receiver, and, with a great laugh, returned 
to the drawing-room. 

“By gracious!” he declared, “that’s the best 
yet. It’s your wife’s hat, all right, Mr. Tumulty, 
and it was blown from her head into the back of 
my car. She ran after us and saw Lawson get 
out, but couldn’t catch me in time, and asked him 
to telephone. Say, but that’s a good one!” 

Mr. Tumulty’s face showed signs of relaxing, 
but Mrs. Nettleton remained chilly. 

“That’s a very likely story,” she said. “If it’s 
as innocent as all that, why did Lawson tell me 
that his business was important and private?” 

“Why, because Lawson is an ass—as usual— 

that’s why. He thought he’d stir up trouble by 

telling you, so he did just that by not telling 
>> 

you. 

Mr. Tumulty said, without emotion: “There 
are circumstantial aspects of this case in your 
favor, Mr. Nettleton. My wife has a habit of 
not sufficiently securing her headgear, and this 

11 


SINGLE REELS 

corroborative testimoney from your witness, Law- 
son-” 

But Mrs. Nettleton interrupted scornfully: 
“His witness Lawson! What does that amount 
to? We didn’t hear a word of what he said, and 
don’t you know that in affairs of this kind men 
stick together like glue?” 

Mr. Nettleton said: “Look here, I’m game. 
The car is outside. We’ll go down and get Law- 
son, first; then we’ll drive to the home of Mr. 
Roscoe Tumulty and try this case out in our own 
court. Mr. Tumulty, as a Iwayer, can get at the 
facts, I guess, with all the witnesses together.” 

If Mrs. Nettleton softened at all during the next 
three minutes she did not manifest the fact, and 
by that time she was seated with Mr. Tumulty 
behind her husband, who was violating the speed 
laws on the way to the office of Orville G. Lawson, 
Mining Engineer. Then, some nine minutes later, 
with Mr. Lawson added to the party, they were 
speeding toward Mr. Tumulty’s apartment on 
Seventy-fifth Street. 

Mrs. Tumulty, anxiously awaiting the ring that 
would announce a messenger-boy, was consider¬ 
ably startled at the sudden entrance of her hus¬ 
band, who was not due until 5 p.m. 

“Why, Roscoe,” she said, “what brought you 
home this time o’ day?” 

“Business,” said Mr. Tumulty. “Business that 
makes it necessary that I should examine the new 
hat I bought you two days since.” 


12 



MRS. TUMULTY’S HAT 


Then Mrs. Tumulty gasped a little and, repeat¬ 
ing “Why, Roscoe,” twice over, began to cry. 

“Oh,” she said, “I know, of course, you—you’ll 
say it was my f-fault, but I thought I did have it 
p-pinned on tight, and the w-wind was awful, and 
n-nearly blew my hair ofF, too, and—and ” 

“Where did it blow to?” asked Mr. Tumulty, 
with something of his professional examination 
air. 

“Into an au-automobile, but I’m g-going to get 
it again, for—for-” 

“That’s all right,” said Mr. Tumulty, “I know 
the rest.” He stepped to the door. “Come in,” 
he said, “this witness will corroborate all the 
former testimony, and is unimpeachable. Verdict 
for the defendant.” 


13 




THE TOY OF FATE 


T WAS resting on a park bench after a hard day, 
when a disconsolate-looking man, approaching 
the middle years, seated himself at the further end 
and sighed deeply. He seemed so melancholy that 
I opened a way to his confidence. After sighing 
again in a really extraordinary manner, he told me 
this story: 

I am seeking a quiet place—quiet and inex¬ 
pensive. I also wish to be remote from my cus¬ 
tomary haunts, even lonesome. What I want is 
seclusion—I could stand oblivion. Let me explain 
my case. 

I am quite a youngish person—being still under 
thirty-five—and by fifteen years of patient indus¬ 
try and laudable ambition have risen to the posi¬ 
tion of buyer in the woodenware department of 
Wickers & Tubbs, general housefurnishings, with 
a partnership in prospect. Possibly that does not 
sound especially romantic, but it has been so, even 
from the first. I had not been a week in the busi¬ 
ness when I met romance in it, in the person of 
Lavinia Tubbs, daughter of our junior partner. 
Having once looked upon her, I said: 

“My future is assured; I will attend strictly to 
business, and in due time wed Lavinia and enter 
the firm.” 


14 





I MET ROMANCE IN THE PERSON OF LAVINIA TUBBS 















































THE TOY OF FATE 


I did not regard this as a mad dream, not when 
I examined her closely. She was then about six¬ 
teen, and several inches taller than she should have 
been at that age. She was also underweight and 
freckled, and her nose, which was strangely long, 
was not true as to alignment. Her hair looked as 
if it had been left out in the weather; she had a 
droop in one eye and a thin, searching voice. 
Those things would have bothered some people, 
but they filled me with confidence. The competi¬ 
tion was not likely to be brisk. A policy of watch¬ 
ful waiting was the thing. 

“Beauty,” I said, “is a snare. I know her true 
value. I will be a partner in the firm.” 

Through all the fifteen years since then I have 
served for Lavinia. Step by step I have risen from 
the basement to “sales,” from “sales” to a desk 
in the office. I have been not only industrious, 
but circumspect. Whenever Miss Tubbs appeared 
I have shown her delicate attention. Ezra Tubbs 
has invited me to his home and I have sat at his 
table. I have watched Lavinia fulfill the promise 
of her youth—seen her change from a bud to a 
blossom, from a blossom to a prune. I have been 
considerate, even complimentary. Quite often I 
have sent her flowers. I might have precipitated 
matters, any time during the past five years, I sup¬ 
pose, but I have never been as one blinded by love. 
All seemed going well enough. The thought of a 
speedy union with Lavinia, even for the sake of a 
partnership, was not compelling. 

i5 


SINGLE REELS 


But then, last week, trouble began. The quiet 
idyl of fifteen years was marred—the fair prospect 
blurred. I learned with a real shock that Lemuel 
Platt of queensware “ sales,” a bald-headed old 
Methuselah of forty, had twice in the past two 
weeks been asked to dine in the Tubbs home circle 
and each time had taken Lavinia to the theater. 
Think of it! after my fifteen years’ devotion! and 
Lemuel Platt only six months with the firm! One 
of the other boys told me about it. He said Platt 
was going to follow it right up, and that Ld better 
get a move on me. 

I do not approve of slang, but I thought his 
advice about developing motion good. I am 
prompt, once aroused. I wrote a note immediately 
to Miss Tubbs and invited her to accompany me 
to the theater on the following evening. I asked 
her to telephone acceptance, which she did, quite 
promptly. The carrying quality of her voice is 
certainly remarkable. I held the receiver away 
from my ear, for safety. 

I did not know the character of the play we 
were going to see, but I know that I should have 
selected another. It was a comedy and many per¬ 
sons in the audience thought it funny. Miss Tubbs 
did not. The main character in it was an old maid 
whose name by some fatality happened to be 
Lavinia, and, what was still worse, she looked for 
all the world like Lavinia Tubbs herself. After the 
first act Miss Tubbs sat rigid while I tried to think 
of something to improve matters. I decided to 

16 


THE TOY OF FATE 


invite Lavinia to have supper, at a good place. I 
reflected that there is nothing like food and gayety 
to pacify the mind. 

The play ended well enough. The spinster got 
rid of the man who was after her money and wed 
a humble but honest millionaire. Miss Tubbs, 
however, was still cool when we left the theater. 

“I suppose of course you knew what the play 
would be like,” she said, icily. 

“Not in the least,” I said, “and I thought it 
abominable. But I do know what the supper is 
going to be like. We are going across to the Cafe 
Beaumonde and have something very nice in a 
chafing-dish.” 

I knew Miss Tubbs would find something deli¬ 
ciously daring in the chafing-dish idea. She was, 
in fact, mollified, and we were presently in an in¬ 
conspicuous corner, looking at the bill of fare. 

“Let us have something very dainty,” I said. 
“You know how to select such things.” 

That was the kind of remark to win her, but I 
wish she had not decided upon a Welsh rabbit and 
Bocko imitation beer. I suppose she thought it 
would look real frolicsome to be seen having a late 
rabbit and beer at the Beaumonde. 

Miss Tubbs is never in better humor than when 
she thinks she is being frolicsome and sporty. 
That is why I encouraged the rabbit and the make- 
believe beer. That is why I told her about the 
lively doings of Greenwich Village, where the fet¬ 
terless few disport themselves amid weird lights 

1 7 


SINGLE REELS 


and decorations, and promised to conduct her to 
all those nice, interesting places some sweet day— 
evening, I mean—though I have never been there 
myself except incidentally in the daytime, when it 
all looked shockingly frowsy, and anything but 
interesting. 

Miss Tubbs was quite restored by the time the 
refreshments came, and, after a taste of the rabbit 
and a sip of the exhilarating Bocko, became really 
merry. She rested her elbows on the table, and 
with her cheek resting archly on her lightly folded 
fingers, she looked across the foaming Bocko and 
asked me to tell her something more of the unusual 
and fascinating things of life. She had been read¬ 
ing something of the occult of late. Was I inter¬ 
ested in the occult? Had I ever visited a medium 
or attended a seance? 

Ah, then the demon of my destruction patted 
me on the back. I knew something really amusing 
in that line, I said. Once long ago I had attended 
a series of table-tippings, and the results had been 
most wonderful and convincing until, quite by acci¬ 
dent, I had discovered that the medium was tip¬ 
ping the table with her knee. 

“Let me show you how she worked it,” I went 
on, and, crossing one knee over the other and mak¬ 
ing a fulcrum of the ball of my foot, I slowly and 
mysteriously, quite in the mediumistic manner, 
lifted the table an inch or so from the floor. 

Miss Tubbs uttered a startled little, “Oh, my, 
how wonderful!” which encouraged me to still 

18 


THE TOY OF FATE 


further manifestations. I was quite elated in the 
feeling that Lemuel Platt was not really in the 
running with a person like myself. 

“The table tips three times for ‘yes/ twice for 
‘no,’ once for ‘I don’t know,’” I said. “When 
very much pleased, it dances with excitement. 
Most of the spirit controls being Indian chiefs, 
they of course like to dance. I will now ask a few 
questions of Chief Big Wampum.” 

“Oh,” said Lavinia Tubbs, “how lovely!” 

I wished Miss Tubbs had a more subdued into¬ 
nation and that other diners would resist looking in 
our direction. I modified my own tones to the 
lowest audible pitch. I said: 

“Will the big chief please tell us if he is glad to 
be here to-night?” 

The spirit of Big Wampum declared in three 
quite positive lifts of the table that he was. 
Lavinia Tubbs smiled and blushed. 

“Will the chief please tell us if he is glad Miss 
Tubbs is here to-night?” 

Three still more positive lifts of the table. Miss 
Tubbs became almost radiant. The shadow of 
Lemuel Platt had disappeared beyond the horizon. 
I quite forgot my surroundings. 

“Will the chief please tell us if he thinks Miss 
Tubbs looks well in her lovely new evening gown ? ” 

Three large lusty lifts, followed by the begin¬ 
ning of a war-dance. Only the beginning—just a 
few fancy steps, as it were—then, oh, curses! the 
side of the table next Miss Tubbs seemed to sink 


19 



SINGLE REELS 


away and most of the rabbit and practically all of 
the Bocko beer went plunging into her lap. She 
jumped up with a shriek. Her napkin must have 
slipped down, for her new gown was plastered with 
rabbit in the form of a yellow apron, besides being 
soaked with Bocko. A waiter came running. We 
attracted general attention. Lavinia’s voice would 
insure that. 

“Take me home! Take me home at once!” she 
commanded. “Oh, I believe he did it purposely” 
—arraying herself thus publicly against me—“and 
he knew all about that horrid play, too! Just look 
at my dress!” which everybody did, and some re¬ 
marked that it was a shame, while Miss Tubbs 
burst into tears. 

I handed the waiter a bill and did not wait for 
change. Tears certainly did not help Lavinia’s 
type of beauty. “Take me home!” was the burden 
of her refrain, and I directed my efforts solely to 
that end. 

There was a line of taxicabs in front of the 
Beaumonde, but all engaged. I followed down the 
line, looking anxiously. Miss Tubbs came with 
me, repeating that she wanted to go home at once 
and did not care how she got there. I seemed to 
detect less acrimony in her voice, now that we 
were no longer on exhibition, and took this as a 
hopeful sign. 

“Surely you know it was an accident,” I pro¬ 
tested. “Not for all the world would I distress 
you so by intention.” 


20 


THE TOY OF FATE 


“Accident or no accident, I want to go home,” 
wailed Lavinia Tubbs. 

At the extreme end of the line there was an old 
one-horse coupe that ought to have been in the 
Metropolitan Museum collection. Words could 
not picture its dilapidation. Its driver was an 
equally musty relic, and stone-deaf. I had to 
climb upon the box and shout into his ear the 
number and street of Miss Tubbs’s residence. 

When we clambered inside, the place seemed 
unholy. I sensed that the cushions were tattered. 
Neither was it a comfortable vehicle. It was des¬ 
titute of rubber tires and seemed without springs. 
We moved with a jerky jog, and when we crossed 
a car track we stood up a little, supporting our¬ 
selves on the frame of the front windows. When 
we turned into a cobbled street under the “L” we 
stood up still more. Occasionally Miss Tubbs 
moaned out something about what an evening it 
had been, and I could see that among other things 
she was now blaming me for the moldy old coupe. 
I spoke a few soothing words. Incidentally I was 
framing a general defense, and a declaration, 
already too long deferred. I meant to open my 
case as soon as we reached a smooth street, where 
we could sit down. 

I did not do so, however. Just as we came to 
the smooth street there was a heavy bump, fol¬ 
lowed by a splitting sound and a sudden sinking 
sensation. The bottom of our ancient vehicle had 
disappeared, landing us on the ground. Not in 

21 


SINGLE REELS 


disorder, however; still clinging to the front 
window-frame, we were trotting along briskly 
inside the cab. 

“Oh! oh!” shrieked Lavinia Tubbs. “We shall 
be killed. Oh, my new dress! Stop him! Stop 
him!” 

But this was a vain order. I yelled, and pounded 
on the window. The deaf old effigy on the box 
gave no sign. His aged plug of a horse seemed to 
hear, for he quickened up until we had to increase 
our speed considerably. Miss Tubbs wailed that 
she would certainly be killed and charged me with 
the deepest perfidy. I have a recollection of re¬ 
peating over and over something to the effect that 
I was quite innocent of intentional wrong, that our 
horse was too old to go any faster, that the run¬ 
ning was pretty good, that we only had to keep 
going to be quite safe. I might have begun my 
general defense and declaration, I suppose, but it 
did not seem a good time for it. The conditions 
were not sufficiently tranquil. 

It was about four short blocks, and a half of a 
long one, to Miss Tubbs’s home, though the dis¬ 
tance seemed somewhat longer. Lavinia held out 
well, I must say. Being tall and spare, she was 
suited to such exercise. When I first knew her 
she was winning track events at school. Arriving 
at the house, I did not wait for the driver to get 
down. I opened the door, stepped through, and 
helped Lavinia to escape. Then I closed the door, 
paid the fossil and waved him away. I would not 

22 


THE TOY OF FATE 


have tried to explain to that deaf old thing, feeling 
as I was, for a good deal. Let the next man do it. 

To Miss Tubbs, however, my failure to protest 
was incriminating. 

“You didn’t say a word to him/’ she charged, 
hotly. “You had it all arranged—everything— 
the whole evening—all because I let Mr. Platt 
take me to the theater! You thought you would 
punish me, but it will be you who gets punishment. 
I will speak to my father!” 

I have a mortal fear of Ezra Tubbs. It is a 
legacy from my early days with the firm. 

“Lavinia,” I cried, “be calm. Do nothing until 
you hear from me. I will send you a love offering 
before I sleep. I will also write you fully what I 
cannot tell you in this late disturbed hour. Rest, 
dear Lavinia, and await my message.” 

I assisted her up the steps and saw her disappear. 
There was a florist’s shop not far away where I had 
often ordered dainty tributes for Miss Tubbs. It 
being late, there was only a sleepy, stupid boy in 
charge, but I left my order. It was for roses, an 
extravagant quantity, but it seemed to me that 
the case warranted extravagance. I wrote the 
directions carefully on a card, and laid down one 
of my own. 

“First thing in the morning,” I said, “without 
fail. Put them on my account—Mr. Budd knows 
me—and, of course, put in my card. Now get 
that all straight,” and I gave the drowsy idiot a 
little shake to loosen up his caked intelligence. 

23 




SINGLE REELS 


That was a mistake, I suppose. It may have dis¬ 
turbed entirely his feeble mental processes. 

I sought my room, and before I slept I laid my 
case fully and completely before Lavinia Tubbs. 
I told of my long years of devotion and how now 
in one evening a cruel fate by a series of fiendish 
events had undertaken to destroy me. I showed 
clearly how nothing on earth could ever induce me 
to give her a moment’s pain, how, indeed, my 
single thought was for her happiness, and finally 
how one little word from her would make me the 
most fortunate and envied of men. It was a 
strong document. In the morning I would care¬ 
fully revise it and let it follow the roses by an hour 
or so, when Miss Tubbs should have fallen into a 
pensive and even sentimental mood. 

I did not complete this plan. I was still in the 
midst of a light breakfast and careful revision when 
a note arrived per messenger, from Miss Tubbs 
herself. I seized it, pulsing with hope. Lavinia, 
renewed by the morning and greeted by my roses, 
undoubtedly had sent her tender forgiveness. I 
tore off the wrapper. The communication was 
quite brief. There was no beginning. It said: 

You are probably reveling in the thought of your 
fiendish revenge. But your last step this morning, your 
“love offering,” is not to be tamely endured, even by 
one so amiable and forgiving as I. Let me look upon 
your face no more. All relations between us are ended. 
It may possibly interest you to know, however, that I 
am by this same messenger accepting a proposal of 

24 


THE TOY OF FATE 

marriage, found awaiting me last night, from Mr. 
Lemuel Platt. 

Lavinia Tubbs. 

You will admit that this was staggering. I sat 
down, trying to grasp it. “Your last step this 
morning”—what did she mean by that? My last 
step had been forty dollars’ worth of roses. “Your 
love offering”—the roses, of course! Ah!—I 
reached weakly for the telephone, and in a moment 
more I knew. A tide of apology from the floral 
Mr. Budd made all clear; that torpid flower-boy 
had misunderstood completely. 

He had sent them up C. 0 . D. 


25 


MURPHY’S KITCHEN 

A HE rest of us always wondered how Weldon 
could afford to dine at the Walderbilt two or 
three times a week, frequently with a friend. 
Furthermore, he did not pay cash, but merely 
signed his initials to the dinner check, which 
indicated that his credit was not only good at 
the office, but something of an institution, so to 
speak. 

It is true Weldon was a capable space writer 
on the Mercury and made very good money, but 
others of us who did nearly as well were quite 
far from being institutions at the Walderbilt. We 
wanted to know how he could do it, and sometimes 
asked him. His answers were not valuable, being 
rarely twice alike. It was rumored that Weldon 
had private means, which I doubted, for the 
reason that his living-quarters—his one room and 
bath—did not warrant the conclusion. It was 
decent enough, but far from luxurious. Many of 
us had quite as good. 

I was thrown a good deal with Weldon and 
knew him rather better than the others did. 
More than once we had worked up a news story 
together, and I made up my mind that sooner or 
later I would extract from him the secret of his 
desirable hotel connection. The opportunity came 

26 



“POETRY.” I SAID. HE REACHED FOR SOMETHING—SOMETHING 

HEAVY, I JUDGE 



t 















MURPHY’S KITCHEN 


when I stumbled upon the big Building-Permit 
scandal and let Weldon in on it. Our expose grew 
into a series, with unlimited space for a picturesque 
word artist like Weldon. He was duly grateful, 
and we dined at the Walderbilt almost as a habit. 
One night I said to him: 

“Look here, Weldon, you owe me something.” 

He was a bit surprised, but game. 

“How much?” he said. 

“It 5 s not a question of much , it’s how do you 
do it— this , I mean.” 

Weldon reflected. 

“It’s coming to you,” he agreed, presently. 

“Straight?” 

“Yep—straight—I’ve never told it before.” 

The coffee and cigars came. Weldon put his 
elbows on the table and leaned forward a little, 
so that he could talk at close range. Here is 
what he told me. I think it as true as most 
history. He said: 

“I came down here from Sullivan County, fif¬ 
teen years ago, to write poetry. I had been writ¬ 
ing it at home and sending it down, but my 
consignments did not seem to stick. I got one 
piece into the Pink Book , but they cut out all 
but the first and last verses and made a typo¬ 
graphical error that ruined the last line. So I 
came down. I went around to the magazines and 
left my poems with the girl in the front office. I 
guess she didn’t like them, for she always handed 
them back to me when I came around again and 

27 




SINGLE REELS 


didn’t suggest that I leave any more. Then I 
tried the newspapers. 

“I hardly ever got beyond the front office, 
there, either. I ran out of money pretty soon and 
owed for my room rent. It was getting cold, too, 
being toward the end of the year. It wasn’t long 
till I was eating one meal a day and buying it at 
the places where you get the most and toughest 
for the money—the kind that stays with you. 
Mike’s place on the Bowery was my favorite. 
Finally I did get to see an editor—the city editor 
of the Bulletin . He was a thick-set man and had 
a sudden way with him. ‘What’s your line?’ he 
said, in just about the tone he would use if he 
were picking out a gunman. ‘Poetry,’ I said. 
He reached for something—something heavy, I 
judge, probably the inkstand—I didn’t wait to 
find out. 

“About a week after that I got to see another 
editor, Henly Mead. You may remember him, 
night man on the Appeal . Mead was a good- 
enough fellow, and a little deaf. It was that that 
saved me. When I told him that I wanted to 
do poetry he thought I said reporting. ‘Look 
here,’ he said, ‘do you think you could write some 
good stuff about a new hotel that’s just opening? 
Good descriptive stuff, you know, attractive and 
appetizing.’ 

“I hadn’t eaten anything since the day before, 
and I said I thought I could. I had been looking 
into hotel and restaurant windows a good deal 

28 


MURPHY’S KITCHEN 


that day, but I did not mention that. ‘Well,’ 
he said, ‘the new Walderbilt opens to-night and 
they’re going to be good advertisers of ours, if they 
make a go of it. I’ll give you a line to the manager 
and he’ll take you through. You want to see every¬ 
thing, upstairs and down, get your stuff, then 
come back here and write it. We’re short of men 
to-night and you’ve got a chance to see what you 
can do. If you make a good job of it we’ll try you 
on something else. Be there by six-thirty and 
back here as soon afterward as possible, but get 
the stuff right.’ He gave me a note on a card, 
and I escaped. I was tempted to throw it away 
and jump into the river; my faith in my reporting 
ability was slim. 

“I didn’t, though. I went up to the new place 
and gave my note to the manager. I thought I 
might as well be where it was warm, and then I 
might get a chance to pick up something to eat. 
I had an idea of asking to sample the rolls or the 
pie or something. It was Christmas Eve, by the 
way, and they made a big flourish for the occasion. 

“Well, we began at the top and went down. I 
saw a lot of suites that cost about a dollar a 
minute to inhabit, but only one that interested me. 
It had a table in it, set for a big supper. Then we 
went down through the offices and into the dining 
rooms. We came in here first, I remember; and 
say, when I think how I felt then and how I feel 
now—well, I wouldn’t dare to describe the differ¬ 
ence. You’ve been a boy, waiting for the company 

29 


SINGLE REELS 


to get through so you could get your chance at the 
table. That wasn’t a circumstance. I was wild, 
and the difference was the company wasn’t going 
to get through. The guests were coming in, and 
they were having planked steaks and roast ducks 
and all the trimmings, and—oh, never mind, we 
won’t dwell on it. You wouldn’t have thought 
anything could be worse than that experience, 
but that’s where you’re mistaken. The kitchen 
was a good deal worse—you bet it was! There 
were rows of gridirons down there with a glowing 
fire under each one, and standing over it a man in 
a white apron and cook’s cap, turning steaks and 
chops and chickens and making all kinds of mush¬ 
room things, and baking oysters and basting par¬ 
tridges, and the smell and sight of all that food 
cooking right there in easy reach put the finishing 
touches to my madness. I fairly had to hold on 
to myself hard to keep from grabbing a couple of 
birds or steaks and making a dash for the street. 

“And all the time the manager went on talking. 
‘You see,’ he said, ‘how systematic everything is. 
The order comes down, is given to one of these 
men; he has it right before him and prepares the 
food according to it exactly, so there can be no 
mistake. He knows just what to do, how soon it 
is wanted,’ etc., etc. I didn’t listen; I only looked 
at those meats and fowls, with butter and pepper 
and gravy on them, and I know my eyes were 
sticking out a foot. He dragged me to another 
place to show me the egg-cooking machines that 

30 




MURPHY’S KITCHEN 


drop into boiling water, and jump out again 
automatically when the exact number of minutes 
are over. Then he showed me the dishwashing 
arrangements, with the boiling water and the 
traveling crates that are lowered into them. I 
suppose I nodded and said yes to everything, but 
I wasn’t thinking of a thing but those glowing 
grills and those men basting and turning those 
beautiful steaks and birds, and the delicious, mad¬ 
dening smell of them followed me everywhere. 
We went through the pastry department, the 
bakery, and I don’t remember where else, and 
there wasn’t a chance to pick up a bite of any 
sort. We were about to go when he remarked, 
quite casually: ‘Perhaps you would like to see 
where the help eat—it is just their dinner time. 
We call it Murphy’s kitchen.’ 

“I don’t know what I said, but we went in 
there. There was a long table with a lot of robust 
persons seated about it, helping themselves out of 
great pans of beans, corned meat, deep dishes of 
pudding, and huge coffee-pots. It was a royal 
feeding, nothing less. The manager said, You 
see, they fare well—plenty of everything, and 
good, well-cooked food.’ 

“My tongue was sticking to the roof of my 
mouth. I wanted to ask him for a job as porter, 
sweeper, anything to get a chance at that table. 
Then I had an inspiration. ‘It certainly looks 
very appetizing,’ I managed to gasp. ‘I’m almost 
tempted to try some of it myself.’ He slapped 

3i 


SINGLE REELS 


me on the shoulder. ‘Do/ he said; ‘then you can 
tell the public how we take care of our people as 
well as of our guests. Here, folks,’ he said; ‘here’s 
a gentleman from the Appeal who is going to write 
us up and wants to sample Murphy’s kitchen. 
Give him a plate with something on it.’ 

“They were a good lot, and they filled a plate 
with beans and corned beef and handed me a 
hunk of bread, and about a second later I was in 
a chair, trying my best to eat like a human being. 
If you never tried to do that under the circum¬ 
stances you don’t know how hard it is. The 
manager said, ‘Well, you find that pretty good 
food, don’t you?’ I said it tasted the best of any¬ 
thing I’d eaten for a long time, and God knows 
that was the truth. I’d been walking in the cold, 
I said, and was just in the mood for something 
substantial like that. ‘Give him some more,’ said 
the manager—which they did. Then I had pud¬ 
ding and coffee and was just about half filled up, 
but did not dare to take another helping. 

“When I walked out of Murphy’s kitchen I was 
a changed man. I may say that I was no longer 
a poet—the poet had been starved out; the new 
man was all prose: beans and corned beef, and 
ready to do his job. 

“I went back to the office and did it. I wrote 
like a house afire. When I had turned down the 
last page I took it in to Mead. He ran it through, 
then he said: ‘Say, that’s great stuff. Where’ve 
you been all this time, anyway? Come in in the 

32 


MURPHY’S KITCHEN 


morning and I’ll give you something more—some¬ 
thing good. To-morrow’s, by the way, pay-day. 
Get your space bill in early and you’ll be paid for 
this at twelve o’clock.’ 

“I don’t need to tell you how beautiful those 
words sounded. The story made a column and a 
half. The cashier showed me how to make out 
my slip, and I got enough out of it to carry me 
through the week. By the end of that time I had 
done a lot more things and was on Easy Street. 
I stayed with the Appeal till Mead died; then I 
came over to you fellows on the Mercury A 

Weldon smoked and looked into nothing, and 
seemed to have finished his story. 

“But,” I said, that doesn’t explain about 
you dining here, now, and signing checks and 
things.” 

“That’s so; I forgot,” he nodded. “That story 
was a double-header—it fixed me with the Appeal 
and it fixed me with this hotel. The backers of the 
place had started it on a good deal of a gamble. 
They had put up all the capital they had and 
could borrow, and dumped it in, win or lose. The 
city wasn’t so full of money and people as it is 
now, and they were taking what seemed a long 
chance. Well, that story of mine, coming out as 
it did Christmas morning, seemed to touch people 
where they lived, I must have put into it some of 
the feelings I had myself when I was looking at 
all those people eating that good food and some¬ 
thing of the flavor of those cooking things that 

33 



SINGLE REELS 


nearly made a lunatic of me downstairs. I didn’t 
warm up so much on the palatial suites and the 
gilded offices, but when I struck the dining rooms 
and the kitchens I turned myself loose, and I 
rounded off with Murphy’s kitchen in a way that 
would make you cry. It was human-interest, 
heart-throb stuff, all right, and that night there 
were at least a thousand people in the Walderbilt 
eating up everything in sight and wanting to be 
shown through downstairs. The manager sent for 
me next day and had me turn the article into a 
booklet, which they sent all over, I suppose. He 
gave me a pretty good check for the job and with 
it a free pass, for self and friend, good till further 
notice. That was fifteen years ago, so you see that 
old column and a half has been paying dividends 
a good while. I’ve tried not to overwork my 
privilege and I’ve seldom criticized the food, even 
when I should have done so. Confidentially, I 
think the end is in sight. The old manager died 
last year, and the new one has less music in his soul. 
You can’t inherit gratitude, you know. I notice 
the steaks I get are not what they once were. 
I think a tip has been passed along. Oh, well, 
never mind; let us gather sirloins while we 
may.” 

The waiter came just then with the dinner check. 
Weldon carelessly scrawled his initials, scarcely 
looking at it. The man disappeared, and in less 
than a minute, it seemed, came back. 

“The manager says that Mr. Weldon’s special 

34 


MURPHY’S KITCHEN 

arrangement has been withdrawn,” he ventured, 
nervously. 

Weldon displayed no emotion, but carelessly 
laid down a ten-dollar bill. 

“Keep the change,” he said. 


PYGMALION OF THE WINDOWS 

IV/TR. MORTIMER PRESBRY was just what 
his name sounded like, an artist—that is 
to say, a window dresser in a smart up-town shop 
on a satisfactory salary; really a very good salary 
for art, which is not always overpaid. 

Gross emolument, however, was secondary. Mr. 
Presbry loved his art—loved it for art’s sake in 
general, and in particular for a very private 
reason, which he never told to any one in the 
world—not until the great, the wonderful, the 

supreme moment when- 

But I forestall my story. The reason buried in 
the depths of Mortimer Presbry’s soul was, of 
course, a woman. Not an ordinary woman of 
flesh and blood—far from it—oh, very far! A 
woman, indeed, with neither—one, in fact, with 
almost no human attributes; such lifeless, even if 
shapely, hands; feet quite rudimentary, almost 
unrecognizable as such; nothing, really nothing 
of consequence, below the waist line. . . . 

But, ah, above! Such shoulders, such a throat, 
such ravishing eyes and features! Mr. Presbry 
believed that no sculptor had ever modeled a more 
superb vision of beauty than the lovely lay figure 
Lenore, pride of Silkman & Co.’s immense show 
windows, queen of Mortimer Presbry’s heart. 

36 




TURNING HIS EYES UPWARD IN ADORATION 




































































































PYGMALION OF THE WINDOWS 

She had come in one day in a consignment from 
Paris, and Mr. Presbry had known, as soon as he 
saw her unpacked, that she was his affinity. All 
his young life he had been thrown in the society 
of beautiful lay figures, but never before had one 
given him more than momentary thrill. Some¬ 
times at evening when the big olive-hued shades 
were pulled down and Mr. Presbry, his soul in his 
work, arrayed the beautiful, obedient units of his 
flock, he was fanned as it were by a breath of ten¬ 
derness that was not entirely a matter of art. But 
this had been a vague, indefinite emotion, tran¬ 
sitory and without consequence. 

Now all was changed. Mortimer Presbry had 
met his fate. She was not like those others. Her 
classic features were not conventional like theirs. 
And then her deep, lustrous eyes, her melting lips 
—half parted as if about to speak—ah, she had 
personality, that was it, almost a soul! For the 
moment he did not go farther than that. Then 
from somewhere came the startling thought that 
perhaps she had been modeled from life—that 
somewhere she lived. Mr. Presbry’s heart thrilled, 
then grew sad. No, it could not be—life held 
nothing so rare, so perfect: in any case she would 
be in a far land and lost to him—ah yes, lost—and 
it was then that he named her Lenore, for Mr. 
Presbry read a good many poems and knew several 
of those by Mr. E. A. Poe almost by heart. Lost 
Lenore! there was a sweet, sad beauty in the name 
that breathed romance to Mr. Mortimer Presbry’s 

37 


SINGLE REELS 


soul. Even when he decided to think of her as 
purely a creation—the dream of some artist-poet 
like himself—he did not change the name. 

Mr. Presbry’s life became as a kind of beautiful 
vision which formed and floated as it were around 
Lenore. When at five o’clock the great emporium 
closed -and the wide shades were closely drawn 
Mortimer Presbry stepped straight into dream¬ 
land. Then it was he arrayed Lenore and her 
court in resplendent costumes from the unrivaled 
assortment of Silkman & Co., reserving always 
the most beautiful for Lenore. It was as if she 
was his muse, inspiring him to such supreme 
flights of his art that each day an increasing 
throng of window shoppers collected outside, until 
Mr. Presbry, in time, received a substantial 
increase in his salary. 

It was in those quiet hours behind the wide 
drawn shades that Mortimer Presbry really lived. 
Then modestly, even timidly, baring Lenore’s 
arms as far as they went, he rearrayed her in 
the robe of his choice. If he blushed at certain 
moments of this sweet service, should we not 
honor him for it? Chiffon, tulle, old lace, and 
velvets, in what costly fabrics did he not attire 
Lenore? At this hour of the day she was his, 
and his only. They two were alone—those others 
about her did not count. They were, so to speak, 
accessories—that is to say, furniture. Lenore was 
never that to Mortimer Presbry. She had per¬ 
sonality, as I have said. He touched her at such 

38 



PYGMALION OF THE WINDOWS 


times as tenderly, as reverentially as if she had 
held somewhere within her—her organism (the 
actual nature of which he resolutely ignored)— 
a pulsing, loving heart. Sometimes in the 
final moments of his functions he was almost 
overcome. Dropping on his knees to arrange 
the folds of the skirt and adjust the delica¬ 
cies of the “hang,” Mr. Presbry now and 
again turned his eyes upward in adoration, and 
even sometimes clasped his hands in an instant 
of pure rapture. What if he had guessed at such 
moments that a presence in the outer dimness, a 
queen-like creature—whose grace was not entirely 
lost in a formless wrap, whose chiseled throat and 
classic features were not all concealed by a dis¬ 
figuring veil—through a crack of light between 
the shades, with lustrous, liquid eyes watched him 
at his ministrations! Had Mortimer Presbry 
guessed this he might have fainted. Possibly he 
would have died. Art is intense—one can never tell. 

There was a gown that Mr. Presbry chose oftener 
than any other as being most suitable to Lenore; a 
truly regal robe of deep wine-colored velvet, cut, 
ah, how, in the neck? and with what majestic 
flow? My language fails in these details, but I 
know that its corsage, or something, was sown 
with amethysts and pearls, and that it seemed 
created only for Lenore. Clad in it, her melting 
eyes matching its deeper shadows, she became all 
that a queen should be—imperial without being 
supercilious, compassionate though supreme. 

39 




SINGLE REELS 


Mr. Presbry’s fear was that the amethyst gown 
would be sold. Himself employing the very means 
to such a consummation, he yet lived in daily 
dread of it. When Lenore was not wearing 
the dress, he hid its special box far down in the 
drawer of rich appareLs, where it would be less 
likely to be offered by some soulless salesman, 
to be bought and profaned by some unworthy 
purchaser. 

In his quiet bachelor apartment Mr. Presbry 
reflected much on Lenore, and sometimes pictured 
her as one warm and living—magnificent, but 
human, even kind. It was a roseate thought, 
infinitely alluring. Generally it led to a state of 
dreamy sadness, during which Mr. Presbry at 
intervals repeated in a half-whisper the words 
“lost Lenore,” and felt that in some way his life 
was a sweet sacrifice, a kind of apotheosis of the 
might have been. 

But now it was that something quite serious 
happened. You have gathered, perhaps, that Mr. 
Presbry was literary—that is to say, fond of cer¬ 
tain books. Perhaps he had written, but if so the 
fact has been concealed. In his snug bachelor 
apartment he had a handsome shelf of volumes 
to which he added from time to time. One eve¬ 
ning, quite late, drifting carelessly through the Pol 
to Ree volume of his new encyclopaedia—the hand¬ 
some half-morocco installment set—his eyes caught 
the word “Pygmalion,” and almost at a glance he 
had gleaned the old tale 6f the Greek sculptor and 

40 


PYGMALION OF THE WINDOWS 


his ivory statue to whom the gods, upon earnest 
solicitation, had granted life. 

Mr. Presbry read the brief account through 
again, very carefully, every word of it, aloud. 
Then rather suddenly he closed the book and 
began walking the floor. Gentle reader, do not 
jump to a hasty conclusion. Mortimer Presbry 
was not in the least what the boys at the emporium 
would have called a “nut.” Oh, by no means. It 
never occurred to him that any amount of suppli¬ 
cation would incarnate Lenore, but he did go gal¬ 
loping back into the past and revel rather deeply 
in the possibilities of what happened to Pygmalion 
and Galatea; he did toy lovingly with his earlier 
thought that so lifelike a vision as Lenore might 
indeed have been modeled after the living flesh, 
and that somewhere in the world her soul might 
be seeking his—its affinity—and that if he set out 
and sought far and wide, beyond all the horizons, 
he might one day find her. What then? Ah, 
then he would fall upon his knees and arrange her 
“hang”—no, not that; but he would breathe his 
soul out in words of adoration, after which he 
would bring her here, where they would dwell in 
a state of bliss, forever and forever. 

Mr. Presbry allowed his fancy to expand. He 
would draw his savings and buy the amethyst 
gown. Also other things—oh yes—and when he 
came home from his work she would be arrayed 
in it, though waiting for him to give it the final 
deft touches of art. He would be her vassal, her 

4i 


SINGLE REELS 


slave. Mornings he would prepare her dainty 
breakfast and serve it to her while she still reclined 
among the pillows clad in the flimsy dressing-robe 
in which he had more than once attired her at the 
emporium. It would be quite loose at the throat, 
and—but the thought suffused him. He could 
not go further. 

Pygmalion and Galatea! He did not care espe¬ 
cially for those names. Galatea was well enough; 
there was a pretty and useful fabric by that name. 
But Pygmalion, never! The boys at the store 
already called him Presto, though that was a kind 
of compliment. The other they would be apt to 
shorten to Piggy. He could not have endured 
that. 

Mr. Presbry retired late and slept rather 
uneasily. When he went out for his coffee the 
weather was prosaically sharp and he decided that 
he would not immediately set out to scour the 
horizons for his lost Lenore. Even if she existed 
she would be in France. The world war was on 
and few in private life were going to France these 
days. Mortimer Presbry’s taste in dress did not 
run to the mustard tones; besides, he was fully 
a year beyond the draft age. Furthermore, it was 
always possible that Lenore, grown tired of wait¬ 
ing, had entered a nunnery—she might even have 
wed another. Heavy thoughts, but conclusive— 
she must remain his Lost Lenore. His inanimate, 
his unawakened Lenore was safely under lock 
and key, the vehicle and inspiration of his art. 

42 



PYGMALION OF THE WINDOWS 


To-night he would array her in the amethyst 
gown. 

Evening brought a shock—the imperial gown 
was gone! He thought it might have been mis¬ 
placed. He searched madly, then asked a sales¬ 
man who still lingered. Yes, he knew about it. 
One of the men had sold the dress during the 
afternoon. No, he did not remember the pur¬ 
chaser very well—rather slender, he thought— 
wore a heavy military cape and a veil. She had 
taken her purchases along, in her car. It was 
good to get the velvet sold, for it was getting 
just a little off the style. 

Mr. Presbry sighed heavily as he laid out an 
array of costumes for his evening work. Then the 
store became empty and semi-darkened. The 
heavy front shades were closely drawn. He 
carried the boxes to the wide windows and began 
to consider their contents. Which of those choice 
creations was most worthy of Lenore ? 

He was still undecided when there came a rattle 
at the great handle of the front entrance. It was 
locked, and Mr. Presbry at first paid no attention. 
The rules of Silkman & Co. were strict. No goods 
were shown after hours. 

But the rattle came again—this time more vig¬ 
orously; very likely a salesman had forgotten 
something. Mr. Presbry stepped to the entrance 
and pulled back the shade. A large limousine 
stood outside, and at the door a rather slender 
figure, wearing a long military cape and a veil. 

43 



SINGLE REELS 


The light was not very good, just there, but some¬ 
thing about the veiled profile caused Mr. Presbry’s 
heart to behave queerly. He turned the latch 
with a cold hand and pulled the door open. The 
veiled lady stepped in and gently, but definitely, 
pushed it shut behind her. She did not say 
anything, at first; neither did Mr. Presbry. 
Something told him it was one of life’s great 
moments. 

The mysterious visitor was first to break the 
silence. Through the veil came a voice of music— 
such a voice as Mr. Presbry might have imagined 
for Lenore. 

“I thought,” the voice said, “that you—that 
you might like to see how it looked on the—on 
the real one; the- I mean the original.” 

Still Mortimer Presbry was as silent as a 
stopped clock. A dainty pair of gloved hands 
flung back the military cape, stripped off the hat 
and veil. Mr. Presbry backed weakly to the 
counter and gripped it hard. Arrayed in all the 
glory of the amethyst gowrn, Lenore, his Lost 
Lenore, stood before him! 

Only the evening before, in his room, Mr. 
Presbry had vividly, even fondly, rehearsed what 
he would say and do if the gods should ever bring 
him face to face with the living Lenore. It had 
been wasted preparation. He stood now quite 
helpless—his muscles paralyzed, his case of tetanus 
complete. Lenore was calmer. 

“You see,” she said, “I was the model for that 

44 




PYGMALION OF THE WINDOWS 


figure. My father and I were in Paris; he did 
museum work—groups in wax, you know. But 
those things have gone out a good deal, of late 
years, and when the war came we were quite 
poor. So then he got a chance to make some of 
those fashion things. I sat for one which he made 
just before we came back to America.” 

She whom he had named Lenore paused, but 
Mortimer Presbry gave no sign of life other than 
a silent swaying, semirotary movement. 

“I saw myself in your windows,” Lenore went 
on, “and used to pass often to look at the beauti¬ 
ful clothes I wore. One night I was quite late. 
The shades were down, but I peeked in through 
a crack and saw you at work. You were putting 
on the amethyst gown. You must have thought 
it becoming—you let her wear it so much. After 
that I came often to peek in and watch you. It 
was splendid; you seemed so—so in love with— 
with your art.” 

Mr. Presbry managed to make a few inarticu¬ 
late sounds. Lenore added: 

“You didn’t seem to care so much for—for the 
others.” 

“Oh—oh—oh no,” struggled Mr. Presbry, “I— 
I didn’t. I—I-” 

The splendid personage in jeweled velvet seemed 
not to remark his agitation. 

“I used to say,” she went on, “some day I will 
buy the amethyst gown and let him see me in it— 
let him see if he really—if he thinks I am—as— 

45 





SINGLE REELS 


as—if he thinks it becoming, I mean. Do you— 
do you really like me in it?” 

Mr. Presbry closed his eyes. He was laboring 
heavily. “Lenore,” he panted, “Lenore!” 

“Lenore? No, my name is Polly — Polly Daw¬ 
son. But I thought as I came along just now that 
it ought to be Galatea, like the old story, you 
know. Yours is not Pygmalion, is it? Because, 
sometimes, those nights when I watched you, I 
thought you might be thinking—kind of wishing, 
you know—that she was not—that she might be 
a real person, I mean. Or was it just your art 
that made you—look at her that way, and clasp 
your hands sometimes, and-” 

Mr. Presbry awoke to an explosive protest. 
“Oh no!” he gasped; “oh no! oh no!” He 
seemed possessed with repeating these words until 
they died away at last into an almost whispered 
“Lenore—my lost Lenore!” 

“But I am not lost, and I am not Lenore. I 
am Polly Dawson, and I don’t think you like my 
name, and I think you like the old lay figure 
better than—better in the amethyst gown, I mean 
—than the original.” 

Whereupon Mortimer Presbry arose to the 
occasion. 

“Lenore, Galatea, Miss Dawson,” he said, “if 
I am not dreaming, I am in heaven. You are my 
only love—my queen of queens—my dream come 
true. I will toil for you—I will slave for you—I 
will die for you—I-” 


46 






PYGMALION OF THE WINDOWS 

“You don’t need to do any of those things,” 
laughed Polly Lenore Galatea Dawson. “My 
only uncle was in the munitions business. 
He died last week and left us a million dollars. 
Don’t bother with the old windows to-night. 
Come home with me in the car to dinner and 
meet the finest father in the world.” 


47 


AN ORDEAL OF ART 


TF you have tried to get a room in New York 
^ City lately—or anywhere, for that matter— 
you have had an interesting time. Not exactly 
the kind of a time I had, perhaps, but something 
picturesque. You have threaded an anxious way 
through the Sunday papers, of course; you have 
climbed endless stairs and been shot up in eleva¬ 
tors, warm with anticipation as you went up, 
clammy with a fear of bankruptcy as you came 
down. You have groped through caves and tun¬ 
nels; you have looked out of skyless windows on 
the third floor; you have grown dizzy peering 
down from some perch under the roof, which 
you knew about the middle of July would turn 
into a fireless cooker and broil you and stew you 
in your own juice. You will recognize the variety— 
also, the one feature common to all the places—I 
mean the price. You realized at once when you 
heard it that you could not pay it and at the same 
time continue to eat meals which anybody could 
respect. Let us not dwell on this painful aspect 
of a world in the throes of reconstruction. The 
wounds still bleed. 

I had to move, just as you did. Never mind 
why—that is a sore point, too. Like you, I went 
out and hunted—like you, I came home each 

48 


I HAD A FEELING OF BEING AT A PRIVATE WILD WEST SHOW 









AN ORDEAL OF ART 


night with that dull conviction that in a little 
while—just a little while—I should be choosing 
between the river and the open road. Then, as 
the novels say, something happened. Joe Hamby 
told me of a room which he felt sure would suit 
me; he was just giving it up. Nice large room, 
he said, near the Subway, one flight up, good light, 
price reasonable by the present scale. He told 
me the tariff, and it certainly seemed so. Also, 
he said, it was in a private house, occupied by an 
old lady with a taste for art. Knowing, as I did, 
something of collecting, Joe said he was sure it 
would suit me exactly. The old lady, he said, 
was the kindest soul in the world—a collector 
herself, and had also painted in earlier life. He 
said that it was mainly on account of his lack of 
taste that he was leaving; that, lovely as the old 
lady was, they had few points in common; that 
they were not affinities, as it were, in the world of 
art. Anyway, his firm was sending him to Mexico, 
he said, where he would probably be shot or 
kidnapped, and he spoke as if the idea somehow 
afforded him relief. I judged he had enjoyed an 
overdose of art, and, knowing his purely practical 
and material nature, I thought I understood. 

Furthermore, I was pleased—I may say over¬ 
joyed. The thought of a large light apartment in 
an atmosphere of quiet refinement with this gentle 
old lady of taste as the presiding spirit was really 
more than I had ever dared to hope. I did not 
wait to see the place, but told Hamby to secure 

49 



SINGLE REELS 


it for me—to take it by telephone. He did this, 
and was already gone when I arrived, Monday 
morning. 

Now, at this point, I want to be quite fair to 
the motherly soul who became then, and still is, 
my landlady. She opened the door for me, herself, 
and I was cheered and warmed by her smile of 
welcome. Then, almost immediately, I expe¬ 
rienced a slight chill. It was caused by certain 
objects I noticed in the hall. A pair of vases 
impressed me first. They were very large, and 
placed, one on either side of the hall-tree. I had 
never seen such vases before except once on 
Fourteenth Street, in an auction-room window. 
Very likely my landlady had collected them there. 
I am sure they were rare. The man who made 
them could hardly have had time to make another 
pair before they shot him for making those. I will 
not try to describe them—words seem weak in 
that relation. 

Besides, I had noticed other things. The hall- 
tree itself had its points. They were horns, in 
fact, and two of them projected from the head 
of an Indian chief, which some gifted house-painter, 
dead to shame, had painted above the looking- 
glass. The other horns projected from anywhere, 
without motive or direction. They were to hang 
things on. The hall carpet—well, time and wear 
had done something for that—but the walls! The 
paper was an explosion, and the pictures—there 
were Indians among those, too, and a papier-mache 

50 



AN ORDEAL OF ART 


head of an excited buffalo. My landlady had 
answered nobly to the call of the wild, I could see 
that. Mrs. Griffin—such being the good lady’s 
name—pushed open the parlor door, but I paused 
on the threshold. I caught a glimpse of family 
portraits—done in crayon—and turned resolutely 
away. I said, weakly, that I would like to go at 
once to my room—that I wasn’t feeling very well. 
I was thinking at the moment of Paul Cooper— 
Paul who is on the fine-arts committee at the 
Metropolitan and has been my friend and coun¬ 
selor for several years. I was thinking of the time 
soon when he would be coming to see me. I 
imagined him entering Mrs. Griffin’s hall. Things 
go hard with Paul. 

But a little later that violent portal seemed 
mild by comparison. I stood in my own room— 
the large, light room of my anticipation. Large 
it was, certainly, and a perfect flood of day 
streamed in at the two tall front windows. Every 
corner of that room was radiant—nothing was 
concealed or subdued—ah, me! 

There were tables in the room; there was a 
piano; there was a couch; there were chairs; 
there was a bed, and let me hasten at once to do 
justice to the bed—it was snowy and soft and all 
that a bed should be. Perhaps the other things 
were equally commendable, only I was not pre¬ 
pared for them. Their designs and colors were so 
peculiar. And the things on the piano, the tables, 
even in some of the chairs, were of a nature to 

5i 



SINGLE REELS 


make strong men turn pale—to send even a robust 
materialist like Joe Hamby cheerfully to assassi¬ 
nation by Mexican bandits. I didn’t suppose there 
was such a weird display of crockery and carving 
and burnt leather as that this side of purgatory. 
The couch with its soft, downy pillows, but I will 
not dwell on those—most of them were painted— 
hand painted—and there were Indians here, too, 

and cupids, and poetry, and- Oh, what’s the 

use! 

Still, these were as nothing, or seemed so, when 
I turned my eyes to the walls. They were wide 
walls, solid as to color, for somebody had told her 
that one must have a plain background for pictures. 
But you hardly noticed the tone of the walls— 
there wasn’t enough of it to show. You could see 
only the pictures. From one end of the room to 
the other, and across the ends—above the piano, 
above the bed, above the couch and tables they 
marched, a solid front of art. They were paint¬ 
ings, most of them, her collection, done by herself. 
I was speechless, and she thought I was over¬ 
whelmed, which was true. 

“I was very talented, as a girl,” she explained, 
“and I took up painting at boarding school. 
Landseer, the great animal artist, was all the 
fashion then, and we copied his designs. That one 
of the ‘Stag at Bay’ was my first attempt, and 
nearly all the others were done while I was in 
school. That one of 'Pharaoh’s Horses’ is the 
last one I did. That was after I was married.” 

52 




AN ORDEAL OF ART 


She sighed. “Married life so often interferes with 
art, and I gave up my painting, to collect things. 
I have always made this room my art gallery, 
because it is so nice and light. I still keep adding 
things to it. I have some scroll candlesticks 
downstairs, now, that you can have if you want 
them.” 

My eyes took in the contents of the walls— 
animals, mainly hounds pursuing deer, or drag¬ 
ging them down; landscapes with perfectly solid 
waterfalls and green-cotton foliage; fruit pieces 
in which the bananas and oranges would have 
required a hammer and chisel to cut them, and 
one photograph—one dear and lovely note in all 
this array of horror, a portrait of the artist herself, 
at seventeen. 

I stood before it wondering how that innocent¬ 
looking lamb could have committed these crimes. 
She explained that it was herself, and added: 

“I always keep it here with the collection. I 
want to give it all to some museum when I’m 
gone—or even before, if I could find just the right 
place. I’ve offered it to the Metropolitan, but 
they couldn’t find room for it. Such a nice 
gentleman came to look at it—a Mr. Cooper, I 
think his name was-” 

“Paul Cooper? Was he here?” 

“Oh yes, and seemed so pleased with everything, 
and so sorry that they couldn’t avail themselves 
of the collection—I think that w T as the expression 
he used.” 


53 




SINGLE REELS 


I felt pretty weak. Paul had seen this ghastly 
place and lived, but what would he think to find 
me living in it? 

“Mr. Hamby said that you were interested in 
art collections and might find some good place for 
mine,” she rambled on cheerfully. “Do you think 
you might?” 

I could not reply, for the instant. I was strongly 
moved to tell her that there was just one place for 
a collection like that—a place not often named in 
polite circles. Then the impulse passed and I was 
moved to say: 

“Madam, your wish does you the greatest credit. 
I will make every effort in my power to help you 
carry it out. My influence in the art world is very 
slight, but such as it is it is yours to command.” 

She trembled a little with emotion. “I see you 
understand,” she said, “and care for such things, 
as I do. I have two more paintings that Fve 
always kept in my room, because they were my 
favorites, but I will bring them up to you; there 
is just enough room for them at the foot of your 
bed. You ought to have them to enjoy a little, 
as they are likely to go to a museum.” 

What was the use? Nothing could make the 
place worse. 

“Yes,” I said, “there is a little space here, and 
I could see them first thing in the morning.” 

She disappeared and presently came bringing 
them. They were the “Challenge” and the 
“Monarch of the Wilderness,” and just filled the 

54 



AN ORDEAL OF ART 


space. She disappeared, and I settled down to 
the nightmare which was to be my steady diet 
henceforth, perhaps forever. By and by I denuded 
one of the smaller tables, placed it in front of the 
window, and sat with my face to the street, trying 
to forget the fearful array behind me. Mrs. Griffin 
came in during the afternoon, bringing the candle¬ 
sticks and a china cat. Next day she brought me 
a burnt-leather bear, and a crockery hen, quite 
large, sitting (or setting) on a nest. I thanked 
her, for it did not matter—nothing mattered any 
more. I had put my own few little prints and 
things into the closet. She had looked at them 
thoughtfully, but with no outspoken disapproval. 
Her heart was always kind. 

It was about the end of my second week in the 
torture chamber that I heard from Maria Crosby 
—Maria J. Crosby, tall, angular, and forty-five, 
who had gone down to the mountains of east 
Tennessee, to try to bring a little light into the 
lives of the hill people—mostly moonshiners—of 
that retired district. I have never been stirred 
by Maria’s beauty, though admiring her resolute 
instincts of reform. I had thought the mountains 
of Tennessee a good place for Maria, and hoped she 
would stay there. Her letter did not change me 
in that particular, but as I read I began to see 
Maria herself in a new light. I began to see her with 
a halo, as a glorified being, so to speak, moving 
among the lowly habitations of those remote 
hills. Read, and you will understand my emotions. 

55 




SINGLE REELS 


You will never guess [wrote Maria Crosby] the 
poverty of the lives of these people, so far as any¬ 
thing in the way of culture is concerned—not a 
book, not a picture, not an object of any sort 
that would direct their thoughts to anything 
beyond their hopeless and meager and sordid 
daily round. Many of them do not read, and 
never even saw a book, or a picture. In my 
school I have hung up a few magazine prints, and 
half the parents in the district have come in to 
look at them. Now, I have a plan. An uncle of 
mine, who can afford it, is going to furnish money 
to build me an annex—a sort of library and 
museum, where I can gather from my friends the 
things they want to get rid of—mere trash to 
them—everybody has such things—but precious 
beyond price to these starved souls. Can’t you 
collect such a bunch of junk as that, and ship it 
to me for the new room? Send anything—any¬ 
thing; it can’t be too bad—books, I can use, but 
mainly pictures and things to look at, for they 
are not yet to the reading stage. You are on the 
ground where such things grow. Gather the har¬ 
vest and send it to me—you will be a benefactor, 
blest through the ages. I know it’s mean to ask 
this of you, but you will understand, and do it— 
won’t you ? 

Blessed Maria Crosby! Your age and angularity 
fell away as I scanned those lines, and left you a 
radiant angel. Three minutes later I was in deep 
converse with Mrs. Griffin. I said I had found 

56 




AN ORDEAL OF ART 


for her the place of all others for her works and 
her collection. I told her of the nobility of Maria 
J. Crosby, and how she was struggling to lead 
those benighted souls to the light. I read portions 
of her letter, editing it a good deal in spots, but 
only in a worthy cause. I became really eloquent, 
in passages, and the good lady was in tears when 
I finished. Then she rose to the occasion, as I 
hoped and believed she would, and made the 
supreme sacrifice. She said it would be far away, 
and she would never see her treasures again, but 
no matter—she had not long, perhaps, to live, 
and she would have lived to some purpose. She 
would send everything, she said, reserving nothing. 
Even the rare vases and things in the lower hall 
should go. She would keep only the family por¬ 
traits in the parlor. I did not touch on that 
point—the door of that deadly mausoleum was 
always closed, anyway. She asked me if I would 
attend to the shipping. I pressed her hand and 
said I would. 

I wrote Maria Crosby that night, and there was 
a van at the door next morning. I did not believe 
either of the women would change her mind, but 
I wanted those things on the way. Mrs. Griffin 
wept copiously as she saw her treasures carried 
out, and I had to support her as the van drove 
away. I went down and paid the shipping people 
something extra to get that stuff packed and on 
board a train, going south. I would have paid 
something to have had the train wrecked, if there 

57 


SINGLE REELS 


had been any danger of its coming back. When 
I returned I hung my own poor little prints and 
things on the empty walls. Mrs. Griffin came in 
and looked about, sighing heavily. 

“It seems too bad,” she said, “but it was in a 
righteous cause.” 

And when, some weeks later, I got a letter from 
Maria Crosby fairly drenching me with compli¬ 
ments, a letter I could show to Mrs. Griffin, who 
received a noble share of its gratitude, and when 
I turned from her tears to my own reconstructed 
walls I knew that we had not lived in vain. 


58 


ENGLISHMAN’S LUCK 


A LONG time ago, during a real-estate excite¬ 
ment in the West, I spent several weeks in 
one of the feverish boom cities of that time and 
locality. Where a Western boom is in progress 
the land agent abounds. Not the steady-going, 
conservative highwayman of the Atlantic States, 
with white waistcoat and ministerial air, but the 
joyous-hearted rough-rider of the plains, who 
charges anywhere from ten to fifty per cent for 
his service and will “locate” anything on a farm 
to sell it, from a silver mine to a covey of quails. 

Such a one was Willis Wilkins, who was perhaps 
the most genial freebooter that ever demanded 
a purse at the point of plausibility. Shortly 
after my arrival I made his acquaintance, at a 
price which I do not now consider excessive 
when I recall the entertainment I subsequently 
enjoyed during a period in which I made his 
office my temporary headquarters—this being 
while I waited with some eagerness for the ten¬ 
derfoot who was to succeed me in my purchase, 
with a resulting profit to both Wilkins and 
myself. 

It is no part of this story to mention that these 
expectations were not entirely realized. I was 
satisfied in time to offset an apparent loss by 

59 


SINGLE REELS 


certain physical benefits, due to what Wilkins 
referred to as “our glorious climatic conditions.’’ 

Wilkins always kept his horse and buggy hitched 
at the door of his office, ready for instant use. 
Frequently when he had an errand in the country 
alone he would ask me to accompany him. These 
trips he enlivened with stories of various proper¬ 
ties which he pointed out as we went along. He 
seemed to know every bit of land for miles around, 
and had been more or less concerned in their 
mortgage or sale from time to time. On one of 
these trips we passed a beautiful farm where the 
buildings, hedges, and crops indicated more than 
usual care and prosperity. Wilkins whipped up 
his horse and drove by it in silence. This was so 
remarkable that I ventured an inquiry concerning 
the ownership of the place. 

“I’ll tell you,” said he mournfully. “That farm 
recalls a sad memory. I’ve sold it, I reckon, oftener 
than any farm in the country, and never got one 
good square commission out of it all put together. 
You see,” he continued, “it was a dry farm— 
couldn’t get a drop of water anywhere on it. One 
of the finest farms in the country, only for that. 
Every man that got it bought it cheaper than the 
one before, and every one tried his hand at well¬ 
digging. Then he’d give up and put the thing in 
my hands again to get what I could, over and 
above a certain price. 

“Well, every man that came along would see 
all those dry wells and beat me down on the price 

60 



THE FARMERS SEEMED TO ENJOY THE JOKE 





















ENGLISHMAN’S LUCK 

until I wouldn’t get enough out of it to pay for 
buggy grease. Then he’d try some scheme of well- 
boring himself, and make a failure of it, like the 
rest. After a while there were dry wells in about 
every field on the place, and it used to make me 
nearly crazy trying to steer men away from those 
holes when I was making a sale. I kept a map of 
them in the office, and when I had nothing else to 
do I used to get out that map and study it. Even 
then I’d run on to excavations every few days that 
I hadn’t kept track of and didn’t have down on 
the chart. The last man that sold the place had 
more money than the others, and stayed with the 
well business longer. He filled up all the super¬ 
fluous wells around the house, and dug another 
one, bigger and deeper and drier than any of the 
rest. 

“Then he went back East along with the others, 
and I had that Jonah of a farm on my hands again. 

“I don’t know how many people I took over 
that place after that, but they every one inquired 
about the water, and stumbled onto one or more 
of the outlying wells in spite of all I could do. 
I finally gave up all hope of getting any 
commission out of it, as usual. 

“One morning there was a dandy-looking 
Englishman came into the office and said he 
wanted to look at a farm. He didn’t seem like a 
farmer, and he wasn’t—then. He thought he was, 
though. He had filled himself up with theories, 
and had come out West to try them. Well, I 

6x 


SINGLE REELS 


brought him out here, thinking maybe he’d have 
some new theories on well boring, too, and I could 
get that place off on him as a sort of experimental 
station. 

“He looked all over the house, and suggested 
improvements here and there, such as he said 
they had in England. Then he looked at the 
barns, and got up on the fence and gazed over the 
fields, and climbed down and dug a little in 
the dirt with the toe of his boot. From the way he 
made his investigations I concluded that he didn’t 
want any farm at all, and was glad enough when 
he said he was ready to go back to town. When 
we got about halfway home he came out of a 
deep study and asked me what the place was 
worth. I didn’t expect to sell, anyway, so I put 
a little raise on the price over what I’d asked the 
last man that went over the place. Then he 
went into another study, and awoke in a half an 
hour to remark that he had overlooked the water- 
supply, but that he supposed there was a good 
well on the place. I told him that there was as 
fine a well there as I ever saw. I didn’t need to 
tell him that he might take his choice out of 
about fifty of them all over the place, and you 
could have knocked me over with a straw when 
he said that he’d drive out in the morning and 
look at the well, and if the water was good, and 
plenty of it, he’d take the place. 

“It didn’t take me long to make up my mind 
what to do. I got that fellow to his hotel as fast 

62 


ENGLISHMAN’S LUCK 

as possible, and went back out in the country at 
a two-forty gait. All the way out I hired men with 
wagons and barrels and water-supply. I hired 
everything I could get hold of in the shape of 
waterhaulers, and I stayed with the job to see 
it through. This ground here holds water pretty 
well after you get it wet, and by morning we had 
that hole, big as it was, about half full of mixed 
water. I told the farmers that it was an English¬ 
man that was going to get the place, and they, 
being mostly Populists, seemed to enjoy the joke, 
and worked like troopers. I went back to town 
for breakfast and to get my Englishman out there 
as soon as possible, before the tide got low. All 
the way out he talked to me about his farming 
theories, and I could see that he was eager for 
the place and thought it dirt cheap. When we 
got there he noticed all the wagon tracks made 
the night before, and asked what they meant. I 
had expected that, and explained to him that it 
had got noised around that the farm was about 
to be sold that day, and that neighbors with dry 
wells had come during the night to lay in a supply, 
thinking maybe he wouldn’t let them get water 
there afterward. Then I got a bucket out of the 
barn and drew up some of it. He looked at it 
and said it was pretty murky, but I told him that 
came from dipping so much. Then he tasted of 
it, and said it had a taste of mixed properties 
which he couldn’t place exactly, but supposed it 
would be all right when it got settled. I told him 

63 


SINGLE REELS 


that there was no doubt of it. Then I got him 
away as quick as possible, for it seemed to me 
that the water was already settling a good deal 
too fast to suit me. He remarked as we were 
leaving that he supposed there were other wells 
on the place, and I said, 4 Oh yes.’ 

“When we got back to town again I drew up 
the papers and he paid over the money, as innocent 
as a child. Then he went after his family, that 
was visiting in Chicago, and was gone two weeks. 
Two days after he was gone they had the big 
earthquake in Charleston, and we got a good 
healthy shock here. Some of the people were 
scared up about it, and I was feeling a little 
remorseful myself, thinking there might be another 
kind of an earthquake when that Englishman got 
back. I was sitting in my office reflecting on it 
next morning, when one of the men that I had 
hired to haul water came in. He was grinning all 
over, and I asked him what was so funny. He 
said he wanted me to come out and look at the 
Englishman’s wells. I couldn’t see the point, and 
he explained it. 

“He said that in the morning after the earth¬ 
quake shock he had passed the 'dry-well farm,’ 
as they called it, and saw water running across 
the road out of the pasture. He had followed it 
up, and what do you reckon he found? 

“That earthquake had opened up an under¬ 
ground river, and every well on the place had 
from ten to a thousand feet of water in it, and 

64 


ENGLISHMAN’S LUCK 


two artesians that had been bored in a low place 
were full and running over. 

“I never was so cast down in my life. That 
farm was worth more than five times what I got 
for it, and after all my hard work and trouble 
with it, then to have a smart Alec of an English¬ 
man come in and get all the benefit! Somehow it 
sort o’ shook my faith in Providence. And ever 
since then,” concluded Wilkins, bitterly, “the 
neighbors have been hauling water from there, 
sure enough. They never told that blooming 
Englishman of the trick they played on him, 
and he has never known any difference ” 


65 


A KNAVE OF KEYS 


TN the electric light I saw that it was not Mc- 
A Gowan, though he was fitting a key into Mc¬ 
Gowan’s front door. Then I remembered that all 
the McGowans were away for the summer. He 
must have heard my footstep, for he turned and 
saw me. Then he started to run. 

“Stop!” I shouted. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” 

That seemed to frighten him. He stumbled and 
rolled into the weeds. I leaped upon his shoulders. 

“No resistance—you’re my prisoner!” 

“That’s so,” he grunted. “I’m it.” 

“I guess you’ll have to stop with me for a while,” 
I said, pulling him up. “I’ve got free lodgings for 
fellows like you.” 

He took it cheerfully. 

“Good enough. How’s the fare?” 

“You’ll know to-morrow. Come on, now, and 
no tricks.” 

We marched toward the jail. I had been in 
office but a week, and was proud of my first cap¬ 
ture. He seemed inclined to be sociable. 

“Pleasant weather we’re having now.” 

I agreed that it was warm for May. 

“Great things, these electric lights.” 

I assented to this, too, adding that they were a 
protection to honest people. 

66 



A KNAVE OF KEYS 


“Yes,” he nodded, “the profession hasn’t much 
show these days.” 

We were at the jail presently. I halted in the 
lighted corridor, and pushing open a door, stood 
aside for him to enter. 

“This is your room. Hope you’ll find it com¬ 
fortable.” 

He looked about approvingly. 

“ Hm! Southern exposure—head to the north— 
very nice, thank you.” 

“Glad you like it. Anything I can do further?” 

“Well, you might send up a pitcher of ice 
water.” 

“Of course—certainly.” 

“And I rise early—suppose you have me called 
for my bath at seven.” 

I was going through his well-made clothes. He 
was unarmed. His pockets contained a little—a 
very little—change, and a small bunch of anti¬ 
quated keys. 

“Couldn’t do much with those things,” I 
commented. 

“It is rather a poor outfit,” he agreed. “Lucky 
I struck these free lodgings. I suppose I’m good 
here till court sits.” 

“Yes—second week in September.” 

“Just fits in with my plans. I think I’ll like it 
here first rate. Good night.” 

I went away, grinning at his assurance. There 
was something free and Western about it that 
appealed to me. I returned presently with a 

67 






SINGLE REELS 


pitcher of cold water, and even apologized for not 
having ice. I rather pitied this gentlemanly house¬ 
breaker, who was trying to earn a dishonest living 
with such meager appliances. 

I rose early, to have a look at him by daylight. 
I listened a moment at his cell, then called through 
the little grated window. 

“Seven o’clock!” I said. “You wanted an early 
call!” 

There was no answer, and I saw now that his 
bed was unoccupied. Neither was he anywhere in 
that end of the cell which I could see. I had rather 
a queer sensation, and somewhat hastily unlocked 
the door. The cell was empty. 

I sat down for a minute on the stool in the cor¬ 
ner. Clearly I had dreamed the whole thing. 
That accounted for much that had seemed curious 
at the time, and became unreal, now, by daylight. 
Then my eyes fell upon the pitcher in the corner. 
I noticed, too, that while the bed was neatly made 
it appeared to have been used. 

I began to have an uncanny feeling, and wasted 
no time in getting out into the morning sunshine. 
As I opened the door at the end of the corridor I 
saw that somebody was sitting on the step. He 
turned just then, and I recognized him. It was 
my guest of the night before. 

“Good morning!” he greeted. “It was pleasant 
outside, so I didn’t wait for my call. I have been 
enjoying the sunrise.” 

I only stared at him. The dream was still going 

68 


A KNAVE OF KEYS 

on. I would wake presently and find myself in 
bed. 

“By the way, your locks are rather poor,” he 
added. “You forgot to leave me a key last night, 
but it made no difference.” 

Still I said nothing. I was probably just wak¬ 
ing. I did not wish to form the habit of talking 
in my sleep. My guest continued: 

“You don’t seem cheerful this morning. Didn’t 
you rest well? I did, and this sun is glorious. I 
never felt better.” 

I found it necessary to speak. 

“Look here,” I said, “I want you to tell me 
three things. First, whether I am awake or not. 
Next, if I am awake, whether or not I locked you 
up last night. Finally, if I did, how in the name 
of common sense you got out here.” 

My guest smiled. I noticed now that his face 
was rather refined—almost aristocratic; that his 
hands were smooth and white, with fingers long 
and tapering. Wonderful fingers! To me they 
always seemed sentient—each with a conscious¬ 
ness of its own. He moved over and made room 
for me. 

“Sit down,” he said, “and let’s consider. First, 
as to being awake, authorities differ as to what 
really constitutes the three conditions known as 
being awake, asleep, and dead, besides which there 
are several mesmeric phases and the more unusual 
trance state. As one slightly versed in such mat¬ 
ters I should not consider you asleep, mesmerized, 

69 



SINGLE REELS 


or in a trance. I therefore conclude that you are 
awake and in possession of the ordinary faculties. 
Next, as to whether you locked me in my room 
last night, that depends upon what you consider 
a lock. To the infant or weak-minded person the 
ordinary catch might constitute a lock. To many 
others a very simple contrivance such as will yield 
to the common shingle nail will prove a perfect 
safeguard. Your ordinary lodger doubtless feels 
safe behind the rather pretty mechanism which 
upon my door was not a difficult problem. From 
the ordinary lodger’s standpoint, I may say that 
you did lock me in my room last night. Finally, 
as to how I got out here, you answered that ques¬ 
tion when you said 'in the name of common sense.’ 
Common sense, coupled with some slight knowl¬ 
edge of the subject in hand. Have I covered the 
ground ? ” 

I pulled myself together. 

“Perfectly,” I acknowledged. “I disagree only 
on the last proposition. Those are good new locks 
on our cells. The county is rather proud of them. 
It required something more than common sense 
and a little ingenuity to open them. It took very 
uncommon sense for one thing, and perhaps you’d 
better come in now and let me go over you again 
for those skeleton keys. I appreciate the fact that 
you didn’t run away, and I want to treat you well, 
but business is business. It’s against the rules of 
the house to let guests come and go as they like. I’m 
a new man here, and the public eye is upon me.” 

70 


1 


A KNAVE OF KEYS 


He returned to his cell quite willingly, and care¬ 
fully, very carefully, I examined his various pock¬ 
ets and linings, feeling him over inch by inch. 
There was literally nothing on his person that I 
could discover. I looked at him helplessly. He 
smiled—a pleasant, reassuring smile. 

“Don’t worry,” he consoled; “I’m not likely 
to leave. I might go farther and fare worse.” 

He followed quite submissively to a cell across 
the way, where there was a lock of an altogether 
different pattern. 

“I’ll bring your breakfast down myself,” I said. 
“Don’t go, please, before I come,” and went out, 
carefully locking the door. 

To say that I was mystified sounds paltry. I 
was by no means sure that I was awake. If awake, 
I was all the more perplexed. As a boy I had been 
a student of magic; still later, of the occult. I 
had heard of beings who could become shadow or 
substance at will, and thus pass through iron bars 
and stone walls. Perhaps he was one of these. I 
began to be less proud of my first capture. One 
such prisoner would make my whole jail a laughing¬ 
stock. Those who had opposed my election would 
not be slow in crying incompetency. After all, I 
had a poor case against him—I had merely found 
him experimenting with a door. No one as yet 
knew of his presence. I wished he would get out 
and stay out. 

I rose and took a turn across the room. Then 
I went to the window and looked down on the wide 

71 


SINGLE REELS 


jail yard, in one corner of which was a vegetable 
garden. A man was weeding one of the beds. 
Then I stood stock still and stared. The man in 
the garden was my guest. 

“I came out to think it over,” he began as I 
drew near, “and to have a little exercise before 
breakfast. We always had a garden at home, and 
I notice yours needs weeding. I shall be very glad 
to care for it as a slight exchange for your hos¬ 
pitality.’’ 

I nodded weakly, and he went on: 

“You see the situation is peculiar—even delicate. 
You have jumped at a conclusion—a belief that 
you found me engaged in a matter which would 
entitle me to free lodgings until the fall term of 
court—perhaps longer. Now, you may be mis¬ 
taken. There is, at least, room for doubt. The 
evidence thus far would hardly convince the public 
of my claim. Furthermore, as the people’s servant 
you doubtless have enemies who are eager to pick 
flaws in your system. Suppose, therefore, you 
allow me the freedom of your very comfortable 
hostelry in exchange for small but willing service. 
Unless you tell them, no one need know the exact 
nature of our connection. I may be regarded as a 
harmless lunatic, a hired man, or a poor relation. 
Later, we might drop the present arrangement. 
Suppose we hear your opinion now?” 

I had stumbled over to the fence, and was lean¬ 
ing against it heavily. 

“Opinion,” I echoed feebly. “My opinion is 

72 



A KNAVE OF KEYS 


that you are not a creature of flesh and blood. 
That you are a spook—a spirit—and I beg you 
will go your way. I will not detain you. It is not 
for me to make terms with a ghost!” 

He laughed gently. 

“You will find I am flesh and blood at meal 
time,” he said, “which, by the way, reminds me 
that it must be near the breakfast hour.” 

That was my weird summer. I was still young 
thirty years ago, and before I went West had been 
interested in curious things. I set myself now to 
solve this mystery—the secret of his power. 

I tried to watch him. When I locked him in his cell 
he showed no desire to leave it so long as I was near. 
Absent for a moment, I would be likely to hear the 
lawnmower, and would look out to find him cutting 
grass. The jail grounds were never so well kept as 
that summer, nor the garden ever so fruitful. 

I tried friendship. I had installed him as a 
harmless eccentric, helping me for his board. I 
now proceeded to make his stay pleasant. Books, 
pictures, a carpet, and some furniture were placed 
in his quarters, and I invited him to my private 
table. His conversation was usually cultured and 
interesting, but gave me no clue as to his secret. 
Indeed his habit was to treat the whole matter 
lightly, as if so slight a thing as opening a few 
patent locks without visible means was of small 
consequence. On the whole, perhaps it was to 
him. In the light of subsequent events I am in¬ 
clined to think so. 


73 


SINGLE REELS 


It was during the first week of September that 
the cashier of our local bank fell dead one morning, 
just before opening time. Then it was found that 
nobody else knew the combination of the safe— 
nobody but the president, who was somewhere in 
London or Paris. The figures were thought to be 
among the cashier’s papers, but no one could find 
the memorandum. Such a matter is of importance 
in a country town. The news reached me by ten 
o’clock, with the fact that the bank would tele¬ 
graph to Chicago for experts if by noon the com¬ 
bination slip did not come to light. 

I hurried over and saw the vice-president in his 
private office. I did not go into details. I merely 
told him that I had a fellow helping around the 
jail who seemed to know a good deal about locks. 
I added that of course I could not say as to his 
experience with combinations, but that he seemed 
to have a faculty for opening such locks as I had 
been able to offer him. Perhaps he could work 
the bank’s combination without hurting the safe, 
and save the expense of Chicago experts. 

The vice-president was incredulous, but willing 
to let the fellow try. If he succeeded they would 
pay him something handsome. Of course it would 
be impossible. Their safe was one of the best. 
Even experts would doubtless use tools. Still, he 
might try. 

Sands was picking beans when I found him— 
Sefton Sands was the name he had given me. He 
put down his pan to listen. 

74 



A KNAVE OF KEYS 


“I want you to do it, Sands—for me That 
bank was against me in the election. I am likely 
to need them by and by.” 

“What make of safe is it?” he asked casually, 
as we drifted in the direction of the bank; he 
declined to hurry. 

I told him. He smiled. 

“That’s rather a different job from those toy 
locks of yours.” 

“But you’ll do it!” 

“I’ll try. Stranger things have happened.” 

We had reached the bank by this time. A little 
crowd was collected about the doorway, but we 
pushed through into the back office, where the big 
safe was embedded in the wall. Sands walked 
directly over to it, merely nodding to the vice- 
president. The banker’s smile was a mixture of 
toleration and contempt. 

“Well,” he laughed, “I suppose you can open 

• >> 
it. 

Sands laid his fingers on the lock, but made no 
reply. 

“Pretty good safe, eh?” sneered the banker. 

Perhaps Sands was a bit annoyed. 

“Oh, yes,” he admitted pleasantly. “Pretty 
good old bread-box; but I wouldn’t keep cookies 
in it, if I were you.” 

The banker flushed. 

“Oh, you wouldn’t! Well, I’ll just give you a 
hundred dollar bill if you open that old bread- 
box!” 


75 


SINGLE REELS 


Perhaps Sands did not hear him. He was bend¬ 
ing very close to the combination knob, begin¬ 
ning to turn it with those tapering, sentient fin¬ 
gers. Somehow we all became still, watching those 
marvelous fingers as if fascinated. They were 
brown now from the sun, but the way they slipped 
and crept and hovered about the secret of that 
nickel disk wrought a spell of silence upon the 
little group of watchers. Something in it all sug¬ 
gested the cat stealing noiselessly upon its prey. 
It was almost hypnotic. 

It may have been only a minute—it may have 
been five—but presently the fingers hesitated, 
ceased. A wave of disappointment swept in upon 
me. A smile grew on the banker’s face. 

For an instant only—the cat had but gathered 
for the final spring. So fast the eye could not 
follow, the fingers sent the revolving disk spin¬ 
ning to the right. An instant’s pause, and a 
second spinning, to the left—shorter this time. 
Then once more to the right—to the left—to the 
right—a slight clicking sound, and Sands stood 
facing us. 

“Your safe is unlocked, sir. I will allow you 
to open it.” 

This was just before court opened. The stir it 
created made my position harder. For the life of 
me I did not know what to do with Sands. It 
seemed impossible that he should be guilty— 
absurd that he should have engaged in common 
thievery when all doors alike were open to him. 

76 




A KNAVE OF KEYS 

Yet I had taken him into custody, and thus far 
he had never really denied his guilt. If he re¬ 
mained he ought to be brought to trial. Trial 
would mean explanations. The situation was be¬ 
coming very “delicate” indeed. Perhaps I should 
convey its urgency to Sands, and advise him to 
escape. It seemed an unusual thing for an officer 
to do, but on the whole the conditions were un¬ 
usual. I grew thin thinking of the conditions, and 
on the night before court opened did not feel like 
retiring. 

It was long after midnight when I went quietly 
down the corridor to his cell. His lamp was lit— 
but, looking in, I could not see him. Rather 
eagerly I unlocked the door. Sands’s cell was 
empty, and a note lay under the shaded lamp. 

Dear Sheriff, and Friend, —It grieves me to go 
without saying good-by, but I do not wish to embarrass 
you with further responsibility. As it is, your con¬ 
science may rest clear. I was not trying to enter that 
house last spring; I wished only to open the door of 
your acquaintance. For reasons I will not explain, my 
supply of funds was low and temporary seclusion desir¬ 
able. I needed quiet summer retirement where I could 
complete certain plans and exchange light exercise for 
summer board. Well-meaning people annoy me some¬ 
times, and I felt that they might be less likely to seek 
me out in your cozy retreat. You have treated me like 
a gentleman, and in return I have only been able to 
keep your garden in order, and to oblige you in the 
little matter of the banker’s safe, which, though having 
no wish to be in the public’s eye, I was willing to 
undertake at your request. The banker’s reward will 

77 


SINGLE REELS 


carry me to where I have reason to believe there 
is a piece of art work needed that is likely to pay very 
well. Please keep the little bunch of antiques—some 
people might call them keys—as a memento of our 
friendship. They were only intended to unlock 
your sympathy. Put with them, for contrast, the 
enclosed, from 

Yours gratefully, 

Sefton Sands. 

I shook the envelope and something fell out. 
It was a slender piece of steel wire, sharp at the 
ends, half circular in form, probably to fit some 
hiding place. It seemed very stiff, yet appeared 
to have been variously bent and straightened. I 
worked with it for an hour—bending, straighten¬ 
ing, and twisting it in the cell lock. It was of no 
avail in my clumsy fingers. I should have re¬ 
mained imprisoned through the ages had my 
release depended on that bit of steel. 

A week later the papers were filled with accounts 
of the Great Burglary of the Metropolitan Na¬ 
tional. It was without parallel in the history of 
bank robberies. A tunnel requiring months to 
construct had culminated with a piece of lock 
work of such surpassing skill that bankers, 
detectives, and safe manufacturers were alike 
appalled. A vast sum of money had been 
obtained. 

I read these accounts with interest, and rather 
guiltily telegraphed Sands’s description. Nothing 

78 


A KNAVE OF KEYS 


came of it. The burglars were never captured, 
and my conclusions may have been quite absurd. 
Yet I have somehow always connected the affair 
of the Metropolitan National with the “piece of 
art work” referred to by Sefton Sands. 



79 


REFORMING JULIUS 

TTANKY DIBBS looked thoughtfully into his 

^ tall glass of sparkling grape juice, then, 
lighting a cigarette, contemplated the somewhat 
dejected faces of his companions. 

“It’s all right,” he said. “Eve always been for 
prohibition—at least for a number of years— 
twenty-three, to be exact—twenty-three, this 
summer.” 

Hanky Dibbs sighed, as if reviewing his 
golden youth-time. One of the circle asked, life¬ 
lessly: 

“ Anything about that particular number of 
years ? ” 

Hanky shook his head; then presently, and 
without encouragement, told this rather pointless 
and uncheerful story. 

“I was quite a young man,” he said, “in Kansas 
—when Kansas had gone prohibition and been 
through a boom. We didn’t fully realize the 
situation, at first—that is, we didn’t accept it. 
We pretended that the boom wasn’t over and 
that prohibition hadn’t begun yet. We went on 
marking up the prices on our town lots, and order¬ 
ing refreshments from the neighboring states in 
such form and variety as our considerate officials 
did not think it worth while to notice. We didn’t 

80 






FOR A MAN OF HIS RACE, JULIUS WAS A LAMB 

















— - — ' - _ 







REFORMING JULIUS 

make much of a success of our bluffs. The liquid 
things were full of damage, but they seldom did 
credit to a gentleman’s taste when he offered them 
to a friend. As for our lots, we could mark them 
up, but we couldn’t sell them. 

“A friend of mine named Del Yokum and I were 
long on lots. We had bought a good deal of a 
cornfield, at front-foot prices, when it was really 
worth about eleven dollars an acre in cultivation, 
and nothing at all, planted with lot markers and 
lamp posts and goldenrod. There wasn’t a thing 
on it that was worth anything except the mort¬ 
gage, and that wasn’t worth its face. We didn’t 
mention that, though, even to each other. We 
went around telling how our lots were right in the 
direction the town was growing, and getting more 
valuable every day. Of course, there might be a 
slight temporary lull in the demand, but that was 
only to give the market a chance to gather itself. 
The East had its eyes on our town and especially 
on our part of it. There was nothing like it 
beyond the Mississippi. 

“Well, there happened to live a fellow named 
Julius Myers in Hamville—that was the name of 
our town—a stout Hebrew person who ran a shoe 
store and did something in real estate on the side. 
Julius was a good fellow, but too easy. He had a 
taste for liquid things, and when he was feeling 
mellow would buy carelessly. He seemed willing 
to take almost anything that was offered him, 
and it was really pitiful the things he bought, 

81 



SINGLE REELS 


though he had luck, too, for he got rid of them 
better than you would expect. I don’t remember 
that he ever really lost on any of his deals, which 
were mostly for little houses right in the town, 
but of course we knew it was only a question of 
time when somebody would attend to his case in 
a thorough and systematic way. 

“Del Yokum and I talked it over. Somebody, 
we said, would import an assortment of beverages 
and light on Julius and sell him enough worthless 
ground to ruin him. We agreed that Julius ought 
to be reformed, and that the way to do it was to 
teach him a lesson. Not a fatal lesson, but just 
a little one—one just about the size of our inter¬ 
est in the cornfield addition. We said that was 
what Julius needed to reform him. 

“We discussed the matter a good deal and fi¬ 
nally decided to invite Julius to a picnic and take 
along the necessary soul-warming juices and sell 
him those lots. Then, when he came to and 
found out what could happen to him under such 
circumstances, he would begin right away to lead 
a changed life. We said it was the only way to 
cure Julius and that it was up to us to do it. It 
was Del’s idea, but I examined it carefully and 
tested it out in every way I could think of, and it 
seemed to me fine and righteous in every partic¬ 
ular. Del said he had a case of material that he 
thought would put Julius in the right frame of 
mind to see possibilities in those cornfield lots of 
ours and to want to own them. He said Julius 

82 



REFORMING JULIUS 

had a passion for Sunday picnics and would cer¬ 
tainly accept our invitation. 

“He did that. We went around to his shoe 
place about closing time and mentioned that the 
woods were at their best now, and that one ought 
to get out into them as much as possible—espe¬ 
cially one shut in, as he was, most of the day. Del 
was going on to say some more, but Julius saved 
him the trouble. He walked straight in at our 
front gate, so to speak. He proposed a picnic 
himself. For a man of his race, Julius was a 
lamb, I’ll say that. 

“Well, we laid ourselves out to make it enter¬ 
taining for him. We got a light covered wagon, 
the kind we used to call a hack, and put in a 
basket of things to eat—chicken and pie—and 
took along a lump of ice, and packed our medicine 
in the bottom of the wagon, with some straw, 
where it wouldn’t be too well advertised. Then 
we drove around and got Julius, who brought out 
a basket of his own. It was certainly a fine summer 
morning, and I can’t remember that I was ever in 
a more cheerful frame of mind. 

“It was a nice place we went to—a shady bend 
of a little river, where we could lie on the moss and 
listen to the birds sing and see the fish jump. 
Julius said they were bass and that he wished he 
had brought some tackle to catch them. He said 
that once he came out there fishing, but didn’t 
have much luck. He said two suckers was all he 
got. Then we talked of one thing and another, 

83 



SINGLE REELS 


and pretty soon Del said he was getting diy and 
we ought to cheer up a little. So he got the lump 
of ice out of the wagon with some of the stuff 
that was packed away in the straw, and some tall 
glasses, we had. Then he cracked some ice and it 
certainly sounded good in those glasses, and the 
general result was cold and effective, even if the 
taste wasn’t all it should be. We all sampled it 
and the world improved right away, and went on 
improving as we continued the treatment, and 
Julius said that of all things he certainly did enjoy 
a picnic in the woods on such a day, with all the 
comforts of life. 

“By and by, when we got hungry, we got out 
our chicken and things, and Julius opened his 
basket, which had some quite unusual sausages in 
it, the kind he said that his people provided for 
occasions of this kind. They were undoubtedly 
good, but pretty highly seasoned, the sort of thing 
to give a person a wonderful thirst. They were 
new to Del and me, and Julius generously let us 
have most of them, as he said he had plenty of 
those things at home. He enjoyed our chicken, 
he said, and by and by he got out a curious- 
looking bottle of pinkish golden liquid which he 
told us came from Palestine and was what his 
people used at their ceremonial feasts. Del tasted 
it and so did I; then we gave up the material we 
had brought along for that ceremonial nectar 
which Julius said he had brought especially in 
our honor. It had a flavor that might have been 

84 


REFORMING JULIUS 

distilled from fruits and flowers of ancient days, 
and when Julius declared that no amount of it 
could possibly hurt us we were amused that he 
should think such an assurance necessary. We 
used up his supply and then we all leaned back 
against trees, and I remember feeling that life had 
certainly showered blessings on me, and even 
riches, though Fve never been able since to figure 
just how I calculated my opulence. 

“Pretty soon Del began to talk about our town 
lots, how specially placed they were for the city’s 
growth and how sure they were to make the 
fortune of any man who had them a year or two 
from that time. Julius said so, too—he even 
went further and said it might be within the 
next six months. He certainly was in as tractable 
and lovely a frame of mind as anyone could wish. 
Then he happened to speak of a little house he had 
recently bought in the middle of town—a little 
red-brick house that had spreading trees in the 
yard and a rose climbing over the front stoop, 
with a bit of lawn in front and a garden at the 
back. I don’t know how it was, but there was 
something about the picture of that house, as 
Julius presented it, that took hold of one’s imag¬ 
ination. He said it was rented to a young man 
and his wife and that their two little girls were 
nearly always playing under the trees when he 
went by, and that he was always willing to go 
quite a distance out of his way just to look at 
them. 


85 



SINGLE REELS 


“When Julius told us those things, while I 
leaned back against my tree and watched the 
bass jumping in the water, I had a feeling that 
I only needed an interest in that house to make 
me perfectly happy. Del must have felt that 
way, too, for pretty soon we were talking about 
the price of it, and the fact that there was quite 
a mortgage on it didn’t seem to matter, for there 
was a mortgage on our lots, too, though consider¬ 
ably less in size. Julius didn’t think at first he 
could part with that house at all, but we finally 
persuaded him to let us have it, mortgage and all, 
in exchange for our lots and our mortgage and a 
thousand dollars cash, which we agreed to pay 
him the next morning. Julius said we must further 
agree not to put his tenants out, as it meant so 
much to his happiness to walk around that way 
and see the little girls playing under the tree. So 
we promised that, too, and drew up a memorandum 
contract on some blanks, which Del happened to 
have in his pocket, and all signed them. Then by 
and by we drove home, and Del and I got rather 
quiet as the spell of that ceremonial nectar began 
to dissolve and we realized that we had a thousand 
dollars to pay in the morning and had only traded 
our mortgage for a bigger one. Still, of course, the 
place was rented; that was something, and our 
lots were quite unproductive. 

“Well, I don’t want to prolong this history. 
Del and I managed to borrow the thousand dollars 
we had to pay Julius, and closed the trade next 

86 


REFORMING JULIUS 

morning. Then we went up to examine the little 
red house, which we had only seen casually before. 
It was all just as Julius said, but there was some¬ 
thing about our feelings that was bad for the 
romance of yesterday. I hadn’t eaten anything 
much that morning, and the sun or something 
gave my head a disagreeable sensation. Del 
looked pretty puny, too, and when we went inside 
and saw the general unrelated condition of things 
we did not feel any better. The woman said her 
husband was out selling silver polish and they 
hoped in a month or two more to be able to begin 
to pay some rent. The two little girls were having 
a discussion. One was pulling the other’s hair. 

“Del and I kept that house and paid interest 
on its mortgage about two years, and in that time 
got nearly enough rent out of it to paper the front 
room, which really needed it. Then we traded 
our title in it for a sway-backed horse, and an 
upright piano with a golden-oak case. We drew 
straws and I got the piano. I didn’t need the 
piano, so I gave it to the new idiot asylum. They 
didn’t want it, either, and traded it in on a phono¬ 
graph. I have forgotten what Del did with the 
horse.” 

Hanky Dibbs looked into his glass of grape 
juice and puffed his cigarette slowly. Somebody 
asked: 

“Did Julius profit by his lesson?” 

Mr. Dibbs flicked the ashes from his cigarette* 
solemnly. 


87 


SINGLE REELS 


“Oh yes, he profited by it, all right. Less than 
six months after we made that deal the Gould 
railroad system decided to build a belt-line around 
Hamville and they wanted that particular spot for 
their switches and things. Julius sold out to them, 
cash in hand, for about eleven times as much as 
the stuff cost him.” 

“ And did Julius reform after you and Del got 
through with him?” asked another of the circle. 

Hanky Dibbs finished the rest of his grape 
juice and set the empty glass down. 

“No,” he said, quietly, “but we did.” 


THOROUGHBREDS FOR THREE DAYS 

\X /E had been through a good many fads in 
the office before we finally touched bottom 
at pugilism. 

We began with Volapuk, I think, somewhere 
back in the remote ’eighties, and passed thence by 
gradual stages through easy lessons in Chinese to 
Browning and Wagnerian opera. 

This completed our first intellectual epoch, so 
to speak, and was succeeded by a brief interlude 
of recreative pastime. Catalogues of bicycles, 
fishing goods, cribbage boards, and the like began 
to collect on Watson’s desk, because Watson was 
systematic and always went deeply into the heart 
and literature of things. 

Metaphysics came next, beginning with spirit¬ 
ualism, from which we drifted into hypnotism 
and Hindu magic. Watson was particularly 
enthusiastic in the latter, and induced Bendy 
and me to invest seven dollars in a magic crystal 
ball, wherein he assured us, we could with slight 
practice behold at will all things absent or present, 
on top of earth or beneath it. 

It was a beautiful and fascinating object to 
gaze upon, this ball, and we arranged it in a little 
darkened cabinet upstairs, where we could retire 
during moments of business inactivity and well- 

89 


SINGLE REELS 

nigh blind ourselves staring into its crystal 
heart. 

It would seem a long jump from Buddhism to 
Pugilism, but we took it, suddenly and without 
premonition. 

The direct cause of our disease came into the 
office one morning while the boys were taking off 
their cuffs and getting ready to discuss thought 
currents. He was a lithe, medium-sized man, 
rather seedily dressed. His coat was buttoned up 
to his neck, and a greasy cap was pulled down 
tight to his head. He looked warm from exertion, 
and asked for a drink of water. 

Bendy directed him to the hydrant in the rear, 
apologizing, as he did so because the ice had not 
come yet. Bently was always polite, and deserved 
a better fate than usually befell him. 

The stranger protested that he did not want 
“iced water,” and we now noticed that his accent 
was decidedly and broadly English; also that he 
wore bicycle shoes and carried something in each 
hand which looked like bits of gas pipe about three 
inches long. 

Bently, judging from this, no doubt*, remarked 
sotto voce as he passed out that he was a plumber 
in disguise. 

I suggested that the things in his hands were 
little make-weights, and that he had impressed me 
as a foot racer. 

Watson, who was older than the rest of us, and 
who, because of his cautious and suspicious nature, 

90 


THOROUGHBREDS FOR THREE DAYS 

perhaps, had charge of the cash, intimated that 
he might be a professional cracksman in search of 
pointers. 

The next morning, at the same hour, the 
stranger came again, and upon the same errand. 
This was too much for Bently, who accompanied 
him back to the hydrant and engaged him in 
conversation. They talked for some time in 
lowered tones, and after the stranger had gone 
Bently came back to us big with information. 

The man was a pugilist, he said, from Australia. 
Had conquered everything hailing from the South 
Pacific except Fitzsimmons, and was now in 
America for that special and particular purpose. 

He had dropped down into our quiet city for a 
month’s rest and recreation before going into 
active training for the event, and went out every 
morning before breakfast for a little ten-mile run, 
merely as a constitutional, to keep his muscles 
firm and prevent his wind getting short. Inci¬ 
dentally his trainer, whom he had referred to as 
’Arry, had arranged a quiet little mill with a 
local fighter from a neighboring town. 

“The bout is to be for five hundred dollars and 
will be ended whenever our man sees fit to put 
the duffer from Arcadia to sleep,” said Bently, 
excitedly. “It’s like finding money in the 
road.” 

I noticed the pronoun “our” and became 
interested, even jealous of Bently, who had been 
the first to win the confidence of such a personage. 

9i 


SINGLE REELS 


Watson observed that a book on the manly art 
could be had for one dollar of a certain publisher, 
whose name he had in his memorandum book and 
whose catalogue of boxing gloves he proposed to 
send for forthwith. Bendy shouldered back to 
the hydrant with a tough air, and threw himself 
into a defensive attitude and ejaculated: 

“I’m a turrow-bred, I am,” just as the ‘‘old 
man” opened the door in from of him; whereupon 
he made a feeble attempt at an apology and 
returned to his desk, covered with confusion. 
Poor Bently. It was hard to believe that only 
two days before he had been discussing Eastern 
philosophy and seeking to probe the mystery of 
the sixth sense. 

On the following morning we were looking for 
our pugilist for some time before he appeared. 
He explained, however, that he was a trifle late 
owing to a longer run than usual—a matter of 
twenty miles or so since daylight, he remarked 
carelessly. Then he requested the use of our 
telephone and called up ’Arry at the “ ’Untington 
Ouse to have me baath ready.” His manner was 
royal, and I could see that even the suspicious 
Watson was impressed. 

There was no question as to the fellow’s supple¬ 
ness and athletic carriage. I noticed this partic¬ 
ularly as he walked back to the hydrant, motioning 
Bently to follow him. They conversed in under¬ 
tones for fully ten minutes. Then the athlete 
went his swinging, catlike way, and Bently came 

92 


THOROUGHBREDS FOR THREE DAYS 


back to us with an air of superiority that waS 
irritating in the extreme. 

“I’m a backer, I am,” he said, with offensive 
Bowery intonation, and squared himself in front 
of Watson, who dodged and put up his cash book 
in self-defense. 

“Til let youse fellows in on de groun’ floor if 
youse got any sand,” he added, with conde¬ 
scension. 

Watson went on making entries, while I looked 
at Bently with ill-concealed eagerness. 

“ What’s the snap, Bent?” I said, at last, 
flinging pride to the winds. 

“Snap? It’s simply finding money! Our man 
has got a chance to take a hundred dollars more 
of even money than he’s able to cover. Nobody 
here knows who he is, and he doesn’t want them 
to know, so he wont try to get the money himself 
for fear they’ll get on to him and knock the whole 
fight in the head. He’s taken a fancy to me and 
given me the first chance at the ‘rake-off.’ I 
told him I had only fifty, and he agreed to let the 
rest of the office in if I said so.” And Bently 
waved his hand majestically, and waited for us to 
grasp the fullness and pomp of the situation. 
“Furthermore,” he added, “we are to have 
reserved seats next to the ring as backers, and 
some authority as to the manner of conducting 
the fight.” 

Bently is a small man, but he swelled visibly as 
he made these statements. In the fullness of my 

93 


SINGLE REELS 


convictions I hastened to assure him that I would 
take twenty-five dollars of the remaining fifty, 
provided Watson would advance me five dollars 
on my week’s salary. 

Watson said that he would do that, also that he 
knew a place where we could get a hook on the 
science and theory of chance. He did not offer 
to cover the remaining money, however, and 
admitted under cross-examination that he had 
never risked a dollar on a wager in his life and 
had conscientious scruples in the matter. We 
respected his scruples, and said we would take it 
ourselves if he would advance us twelve fifty each, 
besides the five dollars I had already arranged for. 

For the remainder of the day our work suffered. 
Both Bently and I still owed payments on our 
bicycles, and we were happy now in the prospect 
of being shortly freed of these burdens. Bently 
was particularly elated, as he would come out 
with enough money to pay up on his wheel in 
full, and buy a dress suit, the need of which was 
old and sore. 

‘‘I think we ought to ask the ‘old man’ to give 
us a half holiday,” he said. “I need a little 
relaxation, and I feel now as if I were able to 
afford it.” 

We got the half holiday the next morning, and 
we went up to the hotel to see our game chicken 
go through his paces. I must say that he per¬ 
formed beautifully, and hammered easily and 
unmercifully his trainer, a short, muscular, sullen- 

94 


THOROUGHBREDS FOR THREE DAYS V 

faced Irishman. Incidentally, we gave him our 
hundred, which he took carelessly and thrust into 
his pocket without even counting. It was a mere 
bagatelle, of course, to a man who was soon to be 
the champion heavyweight of the world. 

Then we went back to the office and made it 
interesting for Watson, explaining to him carefully 
the points of superiority possessed by our fighter— 
his reach, quickness, swinging left-handers, even 
the three double teeth he had lost in a two-round 
fight in which he had conquered and disabled the 
Kangaroo Kid, of Sidney. We could see that 
Watson was restive almost to the verge of regret 
under this pressure, and we took turns in making 
it as entertaining for him as possible. 

The next day was not a holiday, but it might 
as well have been so far as any work was con¬ 
cerned. Bently made an excuse early to get 
uptown, and when he returned informed us that, 
being in training, our man would take nothing 
but seltzer lemonade, though clearly Bently him¬ 
self had been handicapped by no such restrictions. 
Watson flashed out from a little pile of pamphlets 
one treating upon the evils of intemperance, this 
being some twenty years before the perpetration of 
the Volstead Act. 

On the morning following, which was the begin¬ 
ning of the fourth day of our degeneration, our 
pugilist for the first time failed to appear. Bently, 
who looked a trifle shaky himself, hoped that he 
had not fallen ill from over-training. Later he 

95 


SINGLE REELS 


induced Watson to let him do an errand for him 
at the bank. He was gone for some time, and 
when he returned I could not help noticing how 
old he had grown of late. I remember reflecting 
that he could not be as old as myself, and of 
wondering if I looked so worn and aged as Bently. 
I am sure now that I did—a few moments later. 

Bently did not appear to be communicative, 
but, being more or less interested, I was prone to 
interview him. 

“How’s our man? Isn’t sick, is he?” 

“Oh, no, he isn’t sick.” 

There was something about the intonation of 
this reply that made me cold inside. I looked 
searchingly at Bently, who was bending indus¬ 
triously over his work. Watson was marking a 
page in a little pamphlet on the gold cure, which 
he laid over on Bently’s desk. 

“Eh, ah—but, Bently,” I said, endeavoring to 
frame an undefined terror, “it’s all right, of course 
—the other man can’t do him, can he?” 

Then Bently, who has a sense of humor which 
often manifests itself even under the most adverse 
conditions, smiled a wan smile and whispered 
feebly: 

“No, not until he catches him.” 

“You—you don’t mean-” I gasped, and 

was silent. 

Watson made a few soothing remarks and 
hunted out a small treatise he had at hand on the 
wiles of confidence men. 

96 



THOROUGHBREDS FOR THREE DAYS 


Later in the day he read us a brief chapter on 
the fallacy of trying to get money without adequate 
return, and the reign of pugilism had closed. 

Then we returned to our interrupted study of 
Hindu magic, and daily and diligently Bendy and 
I used to gaze into the crystal ball, hoping to learn 
from its lambent depths that our pugilist had met, 
somehow and somewhere, with lingering violence. 

That was all a good while ago. Watson has 
long since solved the secrets of the invisible, but 
to date Bendy and I have had no returns. 


97 


THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 

A FTER which Chalmers lit a cigarette, and 
^ ^ leaned back to puff at it more comfortably. 

“And that’s the very last hurrying I’m ever 
going to do,” he said, with decision. “I’ve fin¬ 
ished that story and delivered the manuscript on 
time, but I had to hurry to do it, and I didn’t eat 
right, and I didn’t sleep right, and I’ve lost twenty 
pounds of flesh in the operation. Now I’m through. 
Hereafter when I undertake a job I mean to allow 
myself plenty of time and to spare. Hurry, hurry, 
hurry! I’ve been hurrying for thirty-five years. 
As a child I was hurried to get up, hurried to school, 
hurried home, and hurried to bed. As a man I’ve 
hurried still more—hurried to catch trains and 
cars, hurried to meals and appointments. I’ve 
dressed in a hurry, eaten in a hurry, worked 
in a hurry, and it’s a wonder I didn’t die in 
a hurry. Now I’m done. I’ve hurried for the last 
time.” 

He paused and puffed with deliberate luxury, 
breathing a liberal quantity of smoke and defi¬ 
ance. We had drifted into the club for luncheon, 
and a number of congenial spirits had gathered 
about our table to hear Chalmers talk. Chalmers 
is convincing when he talks. It is his enthusiasm, 
I suppose, and his New England conscience, which, 

98 



THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 

among other things, stands for absolute sincerity. 
Those who had gathered nodded approval. I 
would not like to say that the fact of Chalmers 
having a stunning sister, whose favor, though much 
to be desired, I was by no means sure of, did not 
influence somewhat the heartiness of my own in¬ 
dorsement. At all events, he addressed his next 
remarks to me. 

“Bert,” he continued, “I’m going to organize a 
new club. I’ll commence right here, and you fel¬ 
lows can be charter members. There’s a Don’t 
Worry Club already, but this is better. It’s a 
Don’t Hurry Club. If you don’t hurry you don’t 
worry, and when people hear of my Don’t Hurry 
Club they’ll all want to join, and the Don’t 
Worry Club will go out of business. Come, 
now, who wants to join? Don’t all speak at 
once.” 

We all did speak, though perhaps I was a trifle 
in advance of the others. To a man we said it 
was a good thing, and just what the generation 
needed. We agreed that the world was moving 
too fast and that people were getting no real good 
out of life, because they did not take time to enjoy 
things as they went along. 

“We must have a badge,” suggested Dixon, who 
drew pictures and saw artistic possibilities ahead— 
“a badge with a tortoise on it.” 

Little Crosby dissented. He was an art editor, 
and his passion for “turning down” Dixon’s sug¬ 
gestions was strong. 

99 




> 


SINGLE REELS 


“Not a tortoise, but a snail. The tortoise has 
made a record for speed. The snail never has. A 
snail by all means, or a delivery boy.” 

“I know a good motto,” put in Merriton, who, 
like Chalmers, wrote things, but who was notori¬ 
ously dilatory in his accomplishments. “I adopted 
it long ago. It’s Latin. ‘Lettum wate durnunT— 
isn’t that good Latin, Tom?” 

But Chalmers’s early training asserted itself. 

“There’s a line from the Bible,” he said; “it’s 
in Isaiah, and it covers the ground better than 
anything I know. ‘He that believeth shall not 
make haste.’ That’s our motto, and the whole 
thing in a nutshell. It’s faith that we must have— 
a sure knowledge that it is unwise to hurry, and 
an unfaltering trust in the perfect result to follow. 
Instead of that we are told to ‘step lively,’ and we 
jostle and crowd like cattle. ‘Step lively’ has 
become the eleventh commandment, and step¬ 
ping lively is the curse of the generation. I am 
going to break that Commandment and remove 
some of the curse. I’m going to begin now, and 
I want to know how many of you fellows will help 
me. How many of you fellows will refuse to ‘step 
lively’? How many will pledge themselves not to 
hurry or be hurried for twenty-four hours? We’ll 
make that the time of probation. If a man in this 
city can quit hurrying for twenty-four hours he 
can quit for good. To-morrow night we’ll meet 
and report. I invite all who agree out to my house 
for the evening. There’ll be something to smoke, 

100 



THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 

and other refreshments. How many of this five, 
besides myself, will be there?’’ 

There was no dissenting voice. We all knew the 
hospitality of Tom Chalmers’s country cottage, 
and the beauty and accomplishments of Tom 
Chalmers’s sister. I was altogether disgusted at 
the eagerness with which little Crosby leaped at 
the opportunity. Only Merriton, the dilatory, 
asked: 

“I suppose there need be no haste in getting 
there. Any time before next morning will do for 
a Don’t Hurry Club?” 

Chalmers regarded him severely. 

“There is a difference between haste and 
promptness, Merriton. It is not the purpose of 
this club to encourage procrastination or careless 
indifference to one’s duties. Its purpose is to 
develop forethought and deliberate action under 
all conditions. Promptness will be one of the first 
and best results.” 

Merriton’s countenance became rather rueful. 

“I thought I was going to be a star member,” 
he said. “Now it begins to look like a dilemma 
with horns on it. I mustn’t hurry to get there, 
but I must get there. I suppose there’s no handi¬ 
cap on starting early, is there, Chalmers?” 

“None. You may start now if you like. It 
takes thirty minutes to get there by train. By 
starting now I think that even you, Merriton, 
might manage to arrive by to-morrow night.” 

We rose, strong in the faith, and determined in 


IOI 


SINGLE REELS 


our resolve. I had the usual pile of letters on my 
desk, and a good many other things. It had been 
my custom to scrawl something that purported to 
be an answer to each of these, and so get rid of the 
mass by evening. Upon my return now I calmly 
took up one letter, calmly read it, then quietly 
answered it in full. I hadn’t done such a thing 
before for years. I leaned back and approved of 
myself. Then very calmly I read and considered 
and answered another. Why, it was bliss. The 
Don’t Hurry Club was to be the greatest boon of 
the century. 

It is true that the pile of letters grew during the 
afternoon, and had grown still more the next 
morning. Like Longfellow’s turnip, it grew and 
it grew. Still I did not falter, or at least not much, 
in my good work. “Bess”—that is to say, Miss 
Elizabeth Chalmers—usually approved of her 
brother’s undertakings, and I wanted to be in 
fairly good standing when night came. I had seen 
none of the others since our agreement, but about 
four o’clock there came a line from Chalmers at 
the club. 

Dear BERT: Come around here when you are 
through, and I’ll take you out with me to dinner. I 
want to talk about ways and means before the others 
get there, and I want you to see how the plan works in 
my own household. Bess has fallen right in with the 
idea, and we feel that we’ve been emancipated. Last 
night there was an alarm of fire next door. Usually we 
should have dashed out half dressed, and altogether dis¬ 
reputable, to get in everybody’s way and be of assist- 

102 


THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 


ance to nobody. As it was, I remembered and called 
out the line from Isaiah to Bess, after which we dressed 
calmly and completely, and went down as correctly as 
if we were going to an evening with Browning. It was 
a false alarm, but it shows what we can do, and as a 
fire-drill of the Don’t Hurry Club was a success. Bess 
is enthusiastic, and we’ve developed a lot of new pos¬ 
sibilities. Come, then, and be here by 5.10 sharp, so 
we can get the 5.28 train. That is, if you can do so 
without hurrying. Don’t hurry! There are other trains 
and though Bess will likely have dinner on the table 
at six, she will understand if we don’t get there. Of 
course promptness is always commendable, while haste 
never is. The way of promptness is the path to pleni¬ 
tude, while that of haste is the highway to hunger. 
That’s the sort of thing I’m turning off now. Rather 
neat, don’t you think so? Come, then, with prompt¬ 
ness, perhaps, but without haste. 

Deliberately, 

Chalmers. 

I had not expected this, and it made my position 
somewhat difficult. I did not really hurry, per¬ 
haps, at least not in the old way, but a strict regard 
for the verities wrings from me the confession that 
during my last few moments in the office I did 
move about with considerable activity. Indeed, I 
felt quite like my former self when, at 5.05, I fell 
into the elevator, which landed me on the pave¬ 
ment just in time to connect with the club and 
Chalmers and the 5.28 and Elizabeth’s six-o’clock 
dinner without missing a move at any point along 
the line. 

“Did you ever see anything work more beauti- 

103 


SINGLE REELS 


fully?” Chalmers asked triumphantly, as we 
entered his cozy little cottage at Cloverdale, and 
found the dinner smoking hot on the table, with 
Elizabeth radiantly beautiful in the joy of our 
prompt arrival. “Not a step of hurry—just ordi¬ 
nary promptness and foresight. Allow yourself 
plenty of time, old man, always plenty of time, 
and then move with deliberation and calmness. 
When people try to hurry you, don’t allow your¬ 
self to be disturbed.” 

I assented. I would have agreed to any state¬ 
ment made by Tom Chalmers while his sister sat 
just across the table, yet I could not help wonder¬ 
ing vaguely whether matters would have been so 
perfectly adjusted if I had allowed Chalmers him¬ 
self to wait long enough to miss the 5.28 train, 
the smoking-hot dinner, and radiant Elizabeth. 

“Tom has made a new maxim,” observed Miss 
Chalmers, “or an axiom, or something. It’s about 
promptness and plenitude-” 

“And haste and hunger,” I supplemented. “I 
have had already a taste of that alliterative wis¬ 
dom, which accounts both for my being here on 
time, as well as for my good appetite for a hot 
dinner.” 

Chalmers regarded me severely. 

“You didn’t hurry, of course, after what I said 
in my note?” 

“Oh no—that is, I couldn’t, you know, after 
what you said. But one must move with a certain 
agility and vigor in order to be quite prompt, don’t 

104 



THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 


you see? That was your idea, wasn’t it, to be 
prompt?” 

“Certainly. Promptness without haste. That 
is the secret of happiness.” 

“So I gathered from your note. It is true that 
in my pursuit of promptness I dipped my mucilage 
brush in the ink, upset a card index, and pinched 
my fingers in closing the desk, but these were mere 
accidents. I have done the same things many 
times, with far less inducement.” 

A surreptitious glance convinced me that Miss 
Chalmers had not missed this delicate tribute, 
while her brother Tom, after regarding me rather 
solemnly for a moment, mounted his new hobby, 
which he proceeded to ride during what I now 
recall as a most delightful dinner. 

Haste, he said, was against nature. Promptness 
was its very soul. The planets never hurried in 
their movements, yet they were always on time 
to the instant. The world, which in the beginning 
had made a revolution in twenty-four hours, did 
not, to keep pace with feverish humanity, revolve 
now in six, but in the same measured period that 
had been its inheritance from the ages. Seasons 
came and went as they had done through all time. 
The seeds sprouted no quicker, the fruit came no 
sooner to maturity. Within the earth precious 
minerals required ages to form. The gold nugget 
and the diamond crystal were not the product of 
a moment or a century, but of some vast eon of 
time. Even animal life, left undisturbed by man, 

105 


SINGLE REELS 


had gone on in the same old fashion that had char¬ 
acterized it in the Garden of Eden. It was pre¬ 
posterous that men alone should have inoculated 
their veins with a fever to lay waste, destroy, and 
at last annihilate. It was lack of faith, he declared, 
an utter and terrible lack of faith in the Great 
Universal Scheme, and he concluded by quoting 
once more the line from Isaiah, “He that believeth 
shall not make haste.” 

I feel that I have not presented the case as well 
as Chalmers did. Tom talks well, as I have sug¬ 
gested, and then his manner carries you along. 
Miss Chalmers and I listened and nodded assent, 
and altogether entered into the spirit of her 
brothers enthusiasm. 

I confess that I should have done so whatever 
had been his doctrines. I was in that state of 
mind which indorses anything advanced or ap¬ 
proved by the one fair she across the table, whose 
every look is rapture, whose every word is joy. 

Yet I was anxious not to appear too eager, too 
clearly personal, in my indorsement of her brother’s 
philosophies. I even raised a mild objection here 
and there, suggesting that, in order not to disturb 
the existing scheme of things—in the matter of 
catching trains, for instance—it became necessary 
at times to act with an expedition which might, 
by certain thoughtless persons, be misconstrued as 
haste. 

But Chalmers would not concede a point. It 
was all wrong, he maintained. Two wrongs never 

106 



THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 

made a right, and in any scheme there was nothing 
worth preserving if it depended on haste. As for 
trains, he would show me, in the morning, some¬ 
thing definite in that line, and how taking a sub¬ 
urban train might be made an aesthetic recreation 
instead of the disgraceful, nerve-destroying scram¬ 
ble it only too often became. There would be no 
sense of haste or anxiety anywhere. I should see. 

In the parlor we held a sort of preliminary meet¬ 
ing. Crosby and Dixon had not arrived as yet, 
while Merriton, the dilatory and irresponsible, 
would come very late, of course, or, still more 
likely, not come at all. 

We agreed that, for the present at least, the 
organizer of the new club should be its president; 
also that I would probably be acceptable as tem¬ 
porary vice-president, the office of secretary natu¬ 
rally falling to Elizabeth Chalmers. 

Knowing that our headquarters were to be the 
Chalmers cottage, I suggested that, in the begin¬ 
ning at least, meetings of the officers should be 
held as frequently as possible, to which both secre¬ 
tary and president heartily agreed. Altogether the 
prospect was delightful, and we fell to discussing 
ways and means and possibilities with an ecstasy 
and extravagance that were the natural result of 
Chalmers’s ample imagination, and my own 
mental fervency. 

When the clock struck nine we suddenly remem¬ 
bered that Dixon and Crosby were still to come, 
with Merriton as a possibility. For my part, I 

107 


SINGLE REELS 


should have been glad to know they were not com¬ 
ing at all; but Chalmers was not quite in my con¬ 
dition, besides having a New England conscience, 
as I have said. 

When the half hour struck he showed signs of 
impatience. 

“It’s all right not to hurry,” he said, “but they 
can’t get here now before 10.30. I didn’t expect 
anything better of Merriton, but Dixon and 
little Crosby, I thought, would at least be-” 

There was a step on the piazza, followed by a 
ring. 

“They’re here now,” he added. “They’ve been 
loitering from the station. They haven’t caught 
the true spirit of the movement. I shall recite to 
them my maxim about promptness and plenitude, 
and haste-” 

The servant’s voice was greeting some one in 
the hall. Then there was another voice and what 
seemed to us considerable delay. Then the door 
opened—rather hesitatingly, it seemed to us—to 
admit—Merriton. 

Yes, it was Merriton. We felt sure of that, 
though I don’t remember now by just what 
features we identified him. Not by his face, cer¬ 
tainly, for that was streaked and bespattered 
beyond the line of semblance. Not by his clothes, 
for they were still further disfigured. There were 
large stains upon both knees. Deep rents began 
at the hem and extended upward. Dismantled 
pockets gaped and hung wretchedly, while mud 

108 




THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 

and the stains of mud possessed and dishonored 
the fragmentary remains. The attempt made out¬ 
side to remove it had been well for the carpets, but 
had been of no special benefit to Merriton. 

I suspect that it was by his attitude that we 
knew him. That outline of humiliation and peni¬ 
tence we had seen before. Merriton meant well, 
but his good intentions had most frequently paved 
a pathway to remorse. As he stood there blinking 
in the full light of the parlor, we knew not whether 
to laugh or to commiserate him. Chalmers was 
first to find speech. 

“Merriton/’ he said mournfully, “you’ve been 
hurrying.” 

The figure in the doorway nodded miserably 

“I—I’m afraid I have a—a little,” he said 
weakly. “You see, I—I wanted for once to be on 
time. So I started in good season and didn’t 
hurry. I got to the station all right, just on time— 
worked like a charm. Then I took the train. 
There’s where I first fell down—figuratively, of 
course, that time. It was the train that branches 
off at Oakwood. I saw people running, so I sup¬ 
pose the Cloverdale train must have been on ahead 
somewhere. I wouldn’t run, of course, and I got 
on the car that stood there handy. When we 
passed Oakwood I waited and waited for them to 
call Cloverdale. I knew that it ought to be only 
a minute or two. When the fellow did call, it was 
John’s Bay, and I was seven miles from this house. 
There was no way to get here by train before 10.30, 

109 



SINGLE REELS 


so I walked across country. I suppose I forgot 
myself sometimes and ran. I—I didn’t mean to, 
but it’s dark and cloudy, and twice I got off the 
road. Once I got into some brush on a side hill 
and fell into the brook at the bottom. I didn’t 
seem to be able to get back up the hill through the 
blackberries, so I followed the brook quite a dis¬ 
tance till I came to an open place. Then I had 
lost a good deal of time, and maybe I hurried a 
little to catch up. Brooks and brush, after a rain, 
are not very good for evening dress, so perhaps I’d 

better get back to town by the next train-” 

He stopped, seeing that Chalmers was about to 
speak. For my own part, I had only pity and 
sympathy for the delinquent, while the face of 
Miss Chalmers was filled with forgiveness. Tom, 
however, regarded the matter somewhat differently. 

“Merriton,” he began, with dignified severity, 
“I regret exceedingly to see you before me in this 
plight. As president of the Don’t Hurry Club, 
whose main object is that serene calm and delib¬ 
erate attention to details, the result of which is 
perfect peace of mind and dignity of bearing, I 
am obliged to reprimand you before the members 

present. Merriton, you are-” 

“Here,” supplied the offender, in weak triumph. 
“I’m here, and that seems to be more than the 
others are. I don’t see Crosby and Dixon present.” 
There came a clang at the doorbell as he spoke. 
“ You shall see them immediately,” said 
Chalmers, and there was a shade of triumph in 


no 




THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 


his voice. “As I was saying, Merriton, you 
are- 

But the door opened at that instant, and instead 
of Dixon and Crosby, the servant entered with two 
telegrams. Chalmers reached for them, and with 
an expedition hardly consistent with his office 
pulled off the covers. Then he read them aloud. 
The first was from Dixon. 

City Hospital, Ward 26. 

Refused to step lively. Dragged two blocks. Laid 
up for ten days. Will sue company. 

The other wire was from Crosby. 

Jefferson Market Jail, Cell 7. 

Wouldn’t step lively. Altercation and arrest. Trial 
ten to-morrow. Want bail to-night. 

No one spoke. Chalmers’s eyes wandered from 
the telegrams to me, thence to his sister, finally 
resting on the pitiful object in the doorway. The 
sight of Merriton recalled his immediate duty. 

“As I was saying, Merriton,” he resumed sternly, 
“you are a disgrace to the organization.” 

The victim of brook and brier nodded humbly. 

“And I suppose you consider those fellows shin¬ 
ing lights,” he said. 

“I do. They have the courage of their convic¬ 
tions, and are martyrs to a cause.” 

Beneath Merriton’s splash and stain there flick¬ 
ered a smile. 

“Yes, that’s so,” he said, “and I suppose it 
doesn’t take courage and convictions to get in my 

hi 



SINGLE REELS 

fix; but I know one thing, I’d rather be in jail 
than here.” 

Then the tension broke. Elizabeth Chalmers 
went forward and gave the unfortunate a welcome 
that was as cordial as conditions would permit, 
while her brother, relenting, suggested a change 
of raiment supplied from his own wardrobe and 
began immediate plans for the release of the noble 
but incarcerated Crosby. 

Merriton said: “I can fix that, I think, if I can 
get back to town. I knew all those Jefferson 
Market people when I was on the Shiner , and 
they’ll take me, if the bail isn’t too big.” 

“You can get a train back to town in thirty 
minutes,” rejoiced Chalmers. “Bob and I’ll help 
you dress, so you won’t need to hurry, and I’ll 
take you to the train, so you can’t miss it. Tell 
Crosby I’ll be on hand at ten to-morrow sure, and 
you’d better call on poor old Dixon to-night, too, 
if you can.” 

We got Merriton into some things with a prompt¬ 
ness that, under the circumstances, could hardly 
be called undue haste. Then with Chalmers he 
disappeared into the night, and the vice-president 
and secretary of the Don’t Hurry Club were left 
to continue its first meeting alone. 

I cannot furnish a full report of this part of the 
meeting. If the secretary made any minutes of 
it, she has thus far failed to produce them. I 
knew that Chalmers would be back in twenty 
minutes, and there seemed a good deal to be done 


112 


THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 

in the interval. Still, as I have said before, under 
the circumstances, I don’t think there was undue 
haste—that is, not much. Indeed, fully ten min¬ 
utes of the precious time had elapsed before the 
secretary was obliged to call my attention to the 
fact that I was vice-president of the new Don’t 
Hurry Club. I may have been holding her hand 
at the time, or perhaps I took it just afterward. 

“Yes, I know,” I argued, “but I am not hurry¬ 
ing. I have known Tom for ages, and I feel as if 
I had known you as long. I have adored you ever 
since I first saw you more than a year ago. You 
must have seen that.” 

“But we ought not to hurry, you know. We 
ought to-” 

“ Be prompt—yes, of course. That is what Tom 
says, and I agree with him.” 

“But we really should consult Tom first; and 
I ought to have time to think-” 

My ear caught the sound of a step on the pave¬ 
ment—a quick, firm step like that of Tom Chal¬ 
mers. My heart had completely forgotten that 
this was a meeting of the Don’t Hurry Club, and 
that, like Dixon and Crosby, we were supposed to 
be two of its shining lights. 

“Yes, oh yes, of course,” I urged feverishly. 
“But, Miss Chalmers—I—oh, Elizabeth, Bess, 
Tom will be here in another second! Say yes, now 
—quick, that is, promptly, and let’s do the think¬ 
ing and consulting afterward!” 

And then I don’t remember just what did hap- 

ii3 







SINGLE REELS 


pen—there are no minutes—but when, a few 
seconds later, the president of the Don’t Hurry 
Club arrived he found the secretary rather flushed 
from stirring a grate wherein there had been no 
fire for weeks, and the vice-president altogether 
triumphant over the club’s first meeting. 

“There are trains up to 9.38,” said Chalmers, 
as we met in the breakfast room next morning. 
“We’ll have to take an earlier one to get to Jeffer¬ 
son Market by ten. There’s one at 8.39. We could 
get that without any difficulty, but it’s a way- 
train, while the next one at 8.50 is an express that 
gets there almost as soon, besides giving us eleven 
more minutes here. We mustn’t fail to get that 
one, though. I wouldn’t miss being at Jefferson 
Market at ten o’clock for considerable. I’m going 
to have something to say on this question of being 
made to step lively and rush and tumble through 
life. The Don’t Hurry Club is going to get some 
free advertising. I was awake half the night pre¬ 
paring a little address to the court. It’s a defense 
of Crosby, and incidentally a plea for more delib¬ 
erate action—more complaisant lives. 

“I keep my watch exactly with railway time,” 
he added, “so that by starting right I need never 
hurry the least bit, but may walk along leisurely, 
listening to the birds and drinking in the real 
bloom and joy of suburban life. In fact, since 
we’ve begun the new regime my walk to the train 
has been a positive luxury, instead of the unhappy 

114 


THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 


exhibition of former times. It is no longer a ques¬ 
tion of ‘catching’ or ‘making’ the train, but of 
calmly selecting the one desired, and of leisurely 
walking to meet it; then of boarding it without 
eagerness and without haste. It was so last night, 
when I walked over with Merriton. We had no 
time to waste, of course, but we did not hurry. I 
called Merriton’s attention to the pleasures of 
deliberate promptness as we went along. He 
seemed a good deal impressed, and I hope will 
remember the difference between our quiet walk 
and his own disgraceful experience.” 

Chalmers spoke as if the new system had been 
in vogue for months. I did not have the heart to 
remind him that less than a week before he had 
been living and working and catching trains at 
the pace that kills. He seemed so very established, 
somehow, in his reformation. Elizabeth came in 
just then, more radiant than ever, in her fresh 
morning attire. She greeted me with a quick, 
firm hand pressure that was delightfully different 
from any former greeting, and that set my 
pulse a-going. Chalmers now consulted his 
watch. 

“It’s just 8,” he said. “We will leave the 
house at precisely 8.40, which gives us ten minutes 
for the walk. In the old days I often covered it 
in five. I have done it in three. It was a spec¬ 
tacular performance.” 

“Are you sure of your watch?” I asked. 

“Oh, Tom’s watch is all right,” laughed Eliza- 

115 


SINGLE REELS 


beth. “He compares it every day, and all the 
neighbors regulate theirs by his.” 

“It’s a great thing to be sure of,” Chalmers 
added. “One never need be uneasy then or dis¬ 
turbed. He that believeth in his watch doth not 
make haste.” 

We set out after a delightful breakfast and 
another thrilling hand pressure from Elizabeth, 
accompanied by a beaming look which Chalmers 
must have noticed had he not been so absorbed 
in the demonstration of his new system as applied 
to the matter of catching trains. It was 8.40, 
precisely, when we closed the gate. 

The sweet spring air brought increasing satis¬ 
faction, and on my part an exhilaration that was 
but poorly restrained. With each step I became 
more eager for the moment when I should lay 
before Chalmers some new domestic possibilities 
in which he was more or less concerned. There is 
something about the rhythm and swing of a rail¬ 
road train that makes a proper accompaniment to 
confidence, and I decided to begin my confession 
the moment we were in our seats. 

There was a little rise of ground just ahead 
from which, in winter, when the trees were bare, 
Chalmers said, one could see the train for some 
distance. In the old days he had often run from 
this point to the station, after the train had been 
in sight, and had usually succeeded in catching 
it. He regretted now that wasted energy. He 
wondered how he had ever lived at such a tension. 

116 


THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 


We made no haste. The country was at its 
best, and Chalmers paused once or twice to point 
out homes of people I knew or had heard of, and 
sites where others were about to build. 

“You’ll have to come out this way, Bert,” he 
said. “A lot of your friends are out here, or 
planning to come.” 

It seemed an auspicious moment, and I was 
about to plunge into confidences forthwith. But 
we reached the rise of ground just then, and I 
saw Chalmers pause and hold up his hand, as if 
listening. I also paused, and then I realized that 
his practiced ear had caught the sound of a faint 
puffing over among the trees to our right. 

“Wonderful how far we can hear that train on 
a still morning like this,” he said. Then, consult¬ 
ing his watch, “It must be at Ringside now, nearly 
three miles away. I didn’t know but we’d spent 
more time than we thought looking at those 
houses.” 

We walked on with restored confidence but I 
noticed that Chalmers did not point out any more 
houses, and perhaps unconsciously quickened his 
step. Then, as the puffing among the trees grew 
ominously louder, he once more consulted his 
watch, and there was another definite increase of 
speed, until presently we were moving at a pace 
not wholly consistent with Chalmers’s faith in his 
timepiece or with our offices of president and vice- 
president of the Don’t Hurry Club. 

“Do you suppose the hands of that infer- 

ii 7 


SINGLE REELS 


nal watch could have caught in the night ?” 
he demanded, presently, with great annoyance. 
“We’ve got to move up, Bert. That train’s our 
last chance and it’s nearer than I thought.” 

I was on the point of quoting the text from 
Isaiah, but resisted the impulse. It did not seem 
altogether wise in view of the situation. 

“Perhaps the train’s ahead of time,” I suggested. 

“No, they’re never ahead. It must be this 

watch-” But at that moment there came a 

white puff of smoke from among the trees ahead, 
and we broke into a run without further ado. 

Now, I know something about running myself, 
and once held the school record for a three- 
hundred-yard dash. But not being a suburban 
resident like Chalmers, with the advantage of con¬ 
tinuous training, I was not in perfect form. Still, 
I held my own fairly well, until suddenly from 
the trees ahead there came a brisk, mellow whistle. 

At that Chalmers leaped forward and passed 
me as if I had been walking. He leaped square 
into a large pool of water, the result of recent 
showers, and the turbid fluid splashed in every 
direction. A good deal of it went on my trousers, 
and a still larger quantity on Chalmers himself, 
extending upward as high as his tie and collar. 

He was not dismayed. The train had left the 
trees and was pulling into the station. It would 
rest there for a brief impatient instant, and then 
away. We must make it—there was no alterna¬ 
tive. I did not pause to hear the birds sing. 

118 



THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 


With a mighty bounding effort I regained my 
lost ground, and was neck and neck with Chalmers, 
splashing down the soft street that led to the 
station. It was a race worth watching, and I 
regret that some of the old class were not there 
to see me “do up” Tom Chalmers and lower the 
record. Still, we were not without appreciation. 
From the little shops on both sides of the way the 
butcher and baker, with their clerks and delivery 
boys, tumbled out to cheer and to encourage us 
to yet further effort. Chalmers running alone 
they had seen and applauded before, but to see 
two semiprofessional sprinters racing neck and 
neck against time was unusual, even for Cloverdale. 

When the train began to move we were still a 
short block away, and on the side opposite the 
platform. The train handles were high from the 
ground, and the footing beneath looked poor. 

“We—we’ll never make it,” I panted. “Let’s 
take—next train and—telegraph.” 

If any struggle took place then between that 
New England conscience of Tom Chalmers and 
temptation, it was instantaneous, and the former 
triumphed. 

“Can’t!” he panted back. “Crosby — ten 
o’clock—must.” 

Then did we accomplish the impossible. Although 
at the utter end of our strength, we actually 
increased our speed for the few remaining yards, 
each caught a pair of handles as they swung by 
on a level with our chins, and at the risk of life 

119 




SINGLE REELS 


and limb dragged ourselves up to soiled, crumpled 
exhaustion, but to safety and triumph. 

We had neither strength nor breath for speech, 
at first, nor to totter inside. When we did, the 
conductor was just coming through. He knew 
Chalmers, and paused to look us over. We were 
worth looking over. 

“Why,” he commented, “what did you do that 
for? Why didn't you wait for the next train?” 

“Couldn’t—important business—ten o’clock!” 
gasped Chalmers. 

“But you’d have made that all right on the 
8.50 express.” 

Chalmers gaped up at him. 

“Isn’t this—the 8.50?” 

“Oh no! This is the 8.39. Five minutes behind 
time this morning.” 

I did not make my confidences to the rhythm 
and swing of the train as I had intended. The 
time did not seem auspicious. 

Neither did Chalmers make the address he had 
lain awake to prepare. He did address the court, 
however, and had some good things to say about 
the rights of citizens, the duties of corporations, 
and the arbitrary discourtesy of their employees. 
What he said was true and forcible, but it was not 
a free advertisement for the Don’t Hurry Club. 
In the end little Crosby paid his fine and Dixon 
paid his bill at the hospital. Chalmers generously 
offered to make good their losses, on the ground 

120 



THE DON’T HURRY CLUB 


that they had been incurred through his well- 
intentioned but somewhat misdirected zeal. 

Not that the Don’t Hurry Club went immedi¬ 
ately out of business. Chalmers would never have 
consented to that, but the membership pledge was 
somewhat modified. 

For instance, we all went to Cloverdale again 
somewhat later, and there were no injunctions 
issued against “stepping lively.” Indeed, we were 
ordered by the secretary to step lively as need be 
to arrive in season. 

As before, I was a favored guest; also Merriton 
-the dilatory and irresponsible Merriton. 

He went with me, as best man. 


121 


BEING A LANDLORD 


T KNEW I was going to be a landlord when our 
own landlord raised the rent. I said there were 
clearly two sides to this rent question, and the way 
to break even was to be on both of them. We 
would buy something tempting—tempting to a 
tenant—furbish it up a little to make it still more 
seductive, establish relations with the first desir¬ 
able applicant, and forget care. When the annual 
boost came around we would pass it along to our 
tenant, without a murmur. It seemed the simplest 
thing in the world—we wondered why everybody 
hadn’t thought of it. Of course it would require 
a bit of capital to start with—perhaps that fact 
had deterred some. Fortunately, we had our little 
bunch of savings in fluid form—in a savings-bank, 
I mean, where they could be drawn at any time. 
We would only have to make a first installment 
and pay for the trifles of paint and paper. The 
rent would easily take care of future payments and 
interest. You see yourself it was a fine idea. 
Elizabeth and I could hardly sleep for discussing it. 

Any doubts we may have had vanished when I 
consulted our real estate man. He was enthu¬ 
siastic over it. He said it solved the whole prob¬ 
lem. It was one of those big revolutionary ideas, 
he said—so simple that nobody had thought of it. 

122 





IT WAS A PRETTY LITTLE BUNGALOW AFFAIR 



















BEING A LANDLORD 


It had come along at a psychological moment, too. 
Houses were renting like hot cakes, and he hap¬ 
pened to have one for sale that was the very thing 
—handy to the station—small payment down— 
neat as a button. His car was at the door; he 
would take us to see the bargain. 

It did seem like one. It was a pretty little bun¬ 
galow affair, facing a sort of park, and it had 
handy-looking improvements, including a furnace 
that was set in a kind of subcellar—the agent said 
to more efficiently conserve and co-equalize the 
heat units, which I hope the reader will understand 
better than we did. I did not notice any way to 
drain the little pit, but the agent said that, being 
at the foot of a hill, as it was, the geodetic sub¬ 
seepage took care of everything. He was a man 
of diction, I will say that. He added that there 
were several parties considering the premises. 

That last remark did the trick. We ascertained 
that our balance at the savings bank would pro¬ 
vide for the first payment, with a slender margin 
for setting said premises in order, and closed forth¬ 
with. Never mind the details of the transfer. I 
recall that there was something they called search¬ 
ing the title—something expensive that gnawed 
deeply into our reserve margin; also formalities 
connected with the insurance, requiring more of 
the reserve, and a rather hectic afternoon when we 
assembled in the agent’s back office to “take title” 
from a grim and muscular woman and a diffident 
little man who appeared in the title deeds as the 

123 



SINGLE REELS 


“grantors,” though it required only one guess to 
tell who was the grantor in fact, the little gentle¬ 
man being mere detail. He seemed always about 
to jump behind her skirts, and dodged perceptibly 
when once or twice she turned on him quite sud¬ 
denly. He attached his signature with what might 
be termed trepidation. It is hardly necessary to 
say who took the check. 

Our agent was right about one thing: houses 
were renting like hot cakes, if one may imagine 
that hot cakes are ever disposed of in that way. 
We selected from several applicants an appealing 
young couple who referred to our little property 
as a nest and a haven, and were unencumbered as 
to family. Also the young man looked as if he 
could pay the rent, and Elizabeth liked the way 
the pretty young wife did her hair. 

It was, however, an expensive coiffure. It daz¬ 
zled Elizabeth into promising a lot of things in the 
way of paint and paper that wiped out the rem¬ 
nant of our reserve and left a very sizable balance 
due our decorator. It is quite amazing what such 
things cost, once you get started. It would require 
a good six months’ rent to put us on a dividend 
basis. We consoled ourselves with the thought 
that the little house certainly did look attractive 
and would probably require nothing more for 
years. 

The latter idea was not well founded. At the 
beginning of the second week, I think it was (I 
know it rained over Sunday), the telephone in- 

124 


BEING A LANDLORD 


formed me (young Mrs. Lincoln’s voice was re¬ 
markably winning) that the front gutter—the 
thing that catches the water from the roof—was 
stopped up, or something, and had overflowed like 
everything and made an awful mess on their clean 
windows, and didn’t I think something should be 
done about it. I admitted that something should. 
I even thanked her for letting me know, and passed 
the hint along to our “Tinner and General Repairs” 
, man down the block, though I hung up the re¬ 
ceiver with a sinking sensation, remembering that 
his newly adopted wage schedule was £1.25 per 
hour and that jobs are long and time is fleeting. 
It was not until the next evening that Mrs. Lincoln 
called me to say, with real concern, that there must 
be a leak in the roof, as quite a spot had come 
through on her nice, new, cream-colored ceiling. 

This was indeed glad news. To find a leak in a 
roof requires genius and leisure. I knew a man 
once who looked for thirty years for a leak in his 
roof and had not located it at last accounts. I 
assured the perturbed Mrs. Lincoln that it was too 
bad; that the matter should at once be attended 
to, and that very likely the spot would disappear 
when dry, though somethingTold me that it never 
would. She said the “Tinner and General Repairs” 
had been there most of the day and seemed to have 
the gutter fixed. I promised to have him back 
next morning, prospecting for the leak, and bade 
her a pleasant good night, after which I broke the 
news to Elizabeth, who spoke a few bitter femi- 

125 


SINGLE REELS 


nine words to the effect that she didn’t see why 
we should do all those things when our own land¬ 
lord was so perfectly impossible whenever we asked 
him to do even the smallest thing; and I thought 
I could see that her admiration for pretty Mrs. 
Lincoln was losing its edge in the thought of our 
prospective dividends going to enrich “Tinner and 
General Repairs.” 

It did not take the latter thirty years to find our 
leak. He was only about three days at it, but his 
bill, added to that for re-doing the cream-colored 
ceiling, made a month’s rent look like thirty cents 
—thirty-five, to be exact. We were, however, not 
entirely disheartened. Such things always had to 
be attended to when a house had been empty, we 
said, and very likely now we had reached the end 
of them. 

Such, indeed, seemed to be the case. Several 
weeks, even a month, went by without further 
report from Mrs. Lincoln (though for a time I con¬ 
fess that I dreaded the sound of the telephone bell), 
and we were lulled into a sense of security that 
became almost elation when still another month 
passed and left our dividends intact. 

But then something quite fresh developed. It 
was getting coolish weather, and one brisk morn¬ 
ing the voice with the smile called up to say that 
they had built a fire in the pretty little fireplace 
and that it smoked awfully—that they really 
couldn’t stay in the room. 

Long ago I had an experience with a smoky 

126 


1 


BEING A LANDLORD 


chimney—a sad and costly experience—one that 
should have taught me always to try a chimney 
before buying a house. I reflected on this as I 
hung up the receiver, after assuring the sufferer at 
the other end—quite cheerfully, not to say gayly— 
that I would be right over, while in my mind was 
growing a ghastly picture of a chimney being taken 
down, piece by piece, with pretty Mrs. Lincoln 
wringing her hands and wailing through her lit¬ 
tered house. 

It was not so bad as that. That old experience 
had taught me something—strange as it may seem. 
I had not noticed it before, but I saw now that 
the pretty fireplace was constructed for appear¬ 
ance rather than for utility. It was a tall fireplace. 
Smoke starting upward for the chimney opening 
had to be carefully trained in order not to spill 
, out into the room before it arrived there. When 
Mrs. Lincoln and I covered the upper heights with 
a slab of cardboard it did well enough. I said I 
would have “Tinner and Repairs” produce a hood 
that would help smoke to steer in the right direc¬ 
tion. I did that, and the bill was fourteen dollars. 
I was so glad that it had not been necessary to 
take down the chimney that the amount seemed 
small. Mrs. Lincoln was also happy. Winter 
passed. 

It seemed now that nothing else could happen. 
We had been through hot weather, rainy weather, 
and cold weather. Being a landlord had not been 
an entirely blissful experience, but, on the whole, 

127 


SINGLE REELS 


we had learned a good deal that would be worth 
something in future. Besides, the worst was cer¬ 
tainly over. 

A reasonable assumption, but not warranted. It 
rained that spring—not a little, but a great deal. 
It rained and it rained—night after night, day after 
day, week after week. In the words of Daudet, 
“ Il pluty il filut> mon Dieu 9 comme il pluty” which 
is more polite than English and means the same 
thing. Looking out on the swimming world morn¬ 
ing after morning, I had a premonition of impend¬ 
ing disaster. 

If ever a premonition was a straight tip, that 
one was. The telephone got me out of bed one 
morning to bring the joyful tidings. It was not 
the voice with a smile this time. It was young 
Mr. Lincoln who was talking, and his voice was 
tinged with acrimony. The trouble was in the 
little subcellar where the furnace stood. The 
geodetic subseepage had not been able to keep up 
with floods, or there was a hitch somewhere in its 
operations. The voice said that the water was 
coming fast. If it kept on coming the way it had 
started it would get up into the furnace high 
enough to put out the fire. I had better come over 
and have a look at it. 

I did not know what I could do by having a 
look at it, but I went. I did not wait for breakfast 
—the case seemed urgent. I found the young man 
standing on the lower steps that led down into the 
pit of sorrows, bailing heavily, handing up pails of 

128 


BEING A LANDLORD 


water to young Mrs. Lincoln, whose coiffure was 
not at its best. I relieved her and we reduced the 
freshet, but it was only a stay of execution. At 
one corner a small steady stream was trickling in, 
and in a little time the deadly level would be creep¬ 
ing up again, as relentless as fate. The young man 
said they had returned from the theater the night 
before, and that, going down to stoke the furnace 
before retiring, he had found the water several 
inches deep. He had been in his dress suit, he said, 
but had postponed other matters to bail out. He 
remarked that he did not enjoy bailing out a cellar 
at one o’clock in the morning with his evening 
clothes on. He spoke with considerable feeling. 
I could see that he would be fussy about such 
things. He went on to say that this morning the 
water was still higher and that as soon as he had 
telephoned me he had gone at it again. I gathered 
that he did not regard the job as a part of the 
obligation assumed with his lease. I did not at¬ 
tempt to debate this point. I felt that my position 
was not strong. I said I would see “Tinner and 
General Repairs” at once and find out what could 
be done. I thought he might provide a man and 
pump for immediate needs, and suggest some more 
conclusive remedy. No doubt the trouble was tem¬ 
porary—almost evanescent, so to speak—that as 
soon as the unprecedented deluge ceased it would 
end. 

“Tinner and Repairs” did not send a man. It 
was that period of the war when men were scarcest 

129 


SINGLE REELS 


and he did not have one. He did erect a pump, 
after an interval of days, during which I personally 
bailed, with slight assistance and heavy profanity 
three times per diem to keep that deadly inflow 
below the fire-line. I know now what it is to be 
on a sinking ship. I manned the pump, too, when 
it arrived, but it was not a complete success. 
Neither did the trouble cease with the rain. In 
fact, the persistent trickle had become a steady 
and forceful spray, quite clear and cold, resembling 
a spring. “Tinner and Repairs” said he believed 
it was a spring that had broken through and would 
now run steadily, the year around. He advised 
taking out the furnace and turning the little sub¬ 
cellar into a well. That remark will cost him dear. 
I shall never engage him again—if I can help it. 

Let us not prolong these bitter memories. It 
became clear, presently, that we could not stem 
the rising flood. Our tenants decided to pay a 
visit to relatives until it abated or until some happy 
genius could provide means of relief. Their lease 
would be out in another month, anyway, they said, 
and of course, under the circumstances, we could 
hardly expect, etc., etc. Which of course we 
couldn’t, and were only too happy to be left with 
our desolation. I never pumped again. A day 
later most of the furnace had disappeared. The 
subcellar had become a well in fact. 

I told the real-estate man that we had decided 
to sell. I did not wholly blame him, I said, for 
not knowing that a clear, cold spring was there 

130 


BEING A LANDLORD 


ready to break through, and I thought many per¬ 
sons might consider a spring an advantage, but 
that we did not wish to bother with remodeling 
the heating-plant and would ask no advance on 
the purchase price. He was very cheerful. He 
said that a good many people were looking for 
houses and he would get rid of ours in no time. 
I don’t know exactly what his idea of “no time” 
was, but a month went by, and our former tenants 
moved out their things, and there was still no one 
to take their place. 

Then one rare May morning a young man 
called at our apartment. He was a dreamy-looking 
person with abnormally thin hair, and he said he 
had heard we had a house to sell. I did not ask 
him how he had heard it—it did not matter. He 
went on to say that he was an inventor and wanted 
a quiet place in the suburbs where he could perfect 
his thoughts and construct his own models. He 
told me of some of his inventions, which ranged 
all the way from a coal scuttle on wheels to a 
folding drawbridge. Many of them seem to be 
attachments to automobiles—one of these being a 
carburetor that would work with kerosene, wood 
alcohol, and several other fluids—I think he said 
lemon extract, hair-restorer, and certain of the 
patent medicines. It was doing wonders when he 
tried some new fluid on it—furniture polish, per¬ 
haps—whereupon it unaccountably blew up and 
scattered his testing car over quite an area—he 
hadn’t found all of it yet. His hair was slowly 

13 1 


SINGLE REELS 


coming in again, he said, but he feared it would 
never be as thick as before. He declared he could 
invent anything—all he asked was a chance. 
Could he see the house ? 

I assured him that he could, and we were pres¬ 
ently on the way. I was not hopeful, but as we 
walked along I spoke of the beauty of the location, 
the outlook on the park, the handiness to trains. 
I tried to lead up to mentioning the newly devel¬ 
oped spring, but we were there before I could 
manage it. 

He took only a glance at the upper areas of the 
place. He wanted to see the basement, he said, 
to inspect its possibilities as a shop. I led him to 
it silently. I had a feeling that the end was near. 
He took a casual look and seemed to approve of 
the size and window arrangement. Then his eye 
caught the square of deadly dark water, the upper 
works of the furnace just showing above it. He 
approached and gazed down upon it—as it seemed, 
eagerly. 

“Ah,” he said, “what have we here?” 

I had thought of a good many things to say, but, 
being bred in righteousness, I decided that I could 
not materially improve on the truth. I told him 
most of what had happened—the heavy rains, the 
breaking through of the water, the bailing, the 
pump (still standing), the belief by some that we 
had acquired a spring that might be utilized, if 
one cared for a spring in the middle of his cellar. 
I added that I did not take much stock in the 

132 


BEING A LANDLORD 


spring idea, that I thought it was just water from 
the sponge of a hill behind us. Many other cellars 
in the neighborhood had water in them and were 
as poorly provided with drainage. I said it hope¬ 
lessly and was not encouraged when he remarked, 
thoughtfully, “Ah, indeed, quite so, quite so—let 
us be going now.” 

He asked me when the next train left and hur¬ 
ried to catch it. He would let me know his decision 
quite soon. I thought I knew it already, but 
politely refrained from saying so. I had completely 
forgotten him when, next morning, his rather thin 
voice informed me by telephone that he would take 
the property and asked that the papers be drawn 
without delay. I did not believe it, of course—I 
thought he had lost his mind—but Elizabeth in¬ 
sisted that I attend to the papers. Something told 
her, she said, that it was all right. Elizabeth is 
strong on intuition. I wanted to say that it was 
too bad that something had not told her to avoid 
that house in the first place; but I counted five 
and changed my remark. 

All the same, Elizabeth’s “something” told her 
correctly, this time. That afternoon, Mr. Wil¬ 
loughby Wood—such being our inventor’s euphoni¬ 
ous name—appeared with a certified check for the 
payment down, and our house of sorrows speedily 
became his. He seemed as gleeful as if he had 
really bought something valuable, and declared he 
couldn’t get established in that grand basement 
quick enough. He had a great idea, he said, some- 

133 





SINGLE REELS 


thing that would be a real boon to mankind. He 
seemed a gentle, trusting soul. I could not help 
feeling sorry for him. 

I have misplaced a good deal of sympathy in my 
time, but I never made a worse mistake than I did 
with that man. One day about six weeks later he 
called me up and asked if I wouldn’t walk over 
that way pretty soon, as he had something to 
show me. I thought he had found some new 
defect in the premises and was going to throw 
them back on our hands. I made up my mind 
that I would travel through the highest courts 
before I would take that place again. I walked 
slowly, grimly petrifying this resolve. He met me 
at the door, beaming. I noticed at once that his 
hair was less scanty. His wife and two offspring 
stood about and beamed also. He wasted no words 
on preliminaries, but beckoned me to the base¬ 
ment. As he opened the door I heard a curious 
sound—it was between a cough and a sneeze and 
a wet whistle. He conducted me straight to the 
little subcellar. I looked down. There was no 
longer any water in it—the floor seemed quite dry 
—the furnace was freshly blackened, even gilded. 
I remarked these things incidentally. What really 
held my eye was a curious little combination of 
wheels and levers and pipes that was making 
strange motions to a variety of intermittent noises 
and apparently having a good time in its way. 

“There it is,” said Mr. Wood. “Greatest inven¬ 
tion of the age. A boon to suffering humanity and 

134 


BEING A LANDLORD 


a fortune for the inventor. The Willoughby auto¬ 
matic hydropathic ejector—cellars and mines kept 
dry at minimum cost—no trouble to run. Every 
man on the block must have one and millions more 
throughout this great land. Manufacturing com¬ 
pany already organized, and work on plant begins 
next week. Sir, you put fame and fortune into 
my hands when you sold me this house. I am 
grateful, sir, and if you ever again need an ejector 
I will put you in a Willoughby at factory rates.” 

I congratulated and thanked him and came 
away with mixed feelings. But they became a 
good deal more mixed when I read this morning 
a certain announcement in the financial section 
of the Times. You also may have seen it—the 
notice that the Willoughby Ejector Company, 
after six months of highly successful operation, has 
increased its capital to three millions, and that a 
limited amount of the new stock is to be offered. 
I have just mentioned the matter to Elizabeth and 
she has another intuition. Something tells her, 
she says, that if ever we want to get even on our 
investment we’d better subscribe for some of that 
stock. 


135 


THE MEANNESS OF PINCHETT 


TT is my opinion that James Pinchett in early 
A life decided to die a mean man. It is my 
further opinion that he will succeed in doing it. 
Those who know him best—his old college class— 
are offering seven to one on it, with no takers. I 
have never known a man to make a more distin¬ 
guished success in any chosen line of conduct, to 
follow it more consistently or to be more favored 
by circumstance. This is not bitterness. I am 
well known for my fairness and calm, dispassionate 
statements. What follows is mere history. I may 
even try to soften it, in spots. 

My first memory of Pinchett has a cheerful 
background. He appeared in the little bunch of 
students that in the early weeks of our first year 
used to gather in a cozy back room, not such a 
weary distance from the campus, to smoke and 
relax and discuss the important problems of life, 
after the hard application of the day. 

We smoked pipes, mostly, and kept our tobacco 
in a community box into which any one emptied 
a sack when he felt like it and had the change to 
spare. Pinchett had the spare change—he was the 
richest one in the class—but he never felt like it. 
We had annexed a round table and used to get 
down the box and set it in the middle of it and help 

136 



YOU D HAVE THOUGHT HIS NECK WAS AT STAKE 












c 



THE MEANNESS OF PINCHETT 


ourselves. That was where Jim Pinchett was 
strong—on helping himself. He had a big pipe and 
it was going steadily. His hand was in the box 
about half of the time. Nobody had invited him 
to sit at our table; he selected it himself, by a sort 
of inspiration. At first we were too polite to crush 
him; later our position did not warrant it. You 
are beginning to get the measure of Pinchett. 

We had other refreshments, at times—a bite to 
eat and something to wash it down with. Did 
Pinchett enjoy these things? Believe me, he did! 
Did he chip into the pot to help pay for them? 
Jamais de la vie! which means that he didn’t—I 
am averse to writing slang in English, just as I 
am opposed to reading certain tales in that chaste 
and polite tongue. 

Why did we submit to Pinchett? I will tell 
you. He had a genius for mathematics. He was 
a fiend for equations—geodetic lines were as A B C 
to him. When I add that he was vain of this gift 
and inordinately fond of giving advice you will 
begin to understand. The rest of us were, so to 
speak, shy on mathematics. Pinchett could be 
counted on in time of need for a little private 
assistance. That’s why we suffered him. That’s 
why we allowed him to smoke our tobacco. That’s 
why we permitted him to eat our hot dogs and 
drink our ginger-beer without smiting him hip and 
thigh and flinging him into the outer desolation. 
He knew it, too, banked on it, capitalized our 
need. 


137 



SINGLE REELS 

Once when the tobacco box was empty I pro¬ 
posed that we play some kind of a game to see 
who should fill it, and for a round of hot dogs. 
Pinchett was weak on games, and I winked at the 
others to intimate that this time we would lash 
him to the mast. He protested, of course. He 
said that it was gambling and that he had been 
brought up to abhor all games of chance. 

For once we did not let him go. We rode him 
down, browbeat him, shamed him till he came in. 
You never saw a man suffer as he did while the 
game was going on. Beads of sweat stood on his 
brow. You’d have thought his neck was at stake 
and the hangman waiting. He was so scared that 
he forgot what little he knew and never by any 
chance played his hand properly. 

He didn’t need to, however. Of all the fool luck 
you ever heard of, Pinchett had it. He swept the 
table. I paid for the tobacco and dogs myself, 
while Jim Pinchett whooped and carried on in a 
way to make a person sick. Perhaps you will 
believe, now, what I said about his early ambition 
to die a mean man. 

But I did not start out to write James Pinchett’s 
life. I have only tried to show you what he was 
like in those early days, and I am going to tell you 
now his latest chapter, so you can see how his 
youthful purpose holds. 

Pinchett has always been faithful to the class— 
I will say that. I don’t know how he ever brought 
himself to the point of paying his way into the 

138 * 


THE MEANNESS OF PINCHETT 

college club; that must have been a heart-breaker. 
I know he went to live just far enough out of town 
to bring him into the nonresident list, which saves 
half the dues, and that he never by any chance 
misses Saturday night when there is a free smoker, 
with something to eat afterward —jamais de la vie , 
as I remarked once before. Neither does he ever 
fail to be on hand when something is ordered, like 
cigars or refreshments. Pinchett has developed a 
perfectly abnormal instinct in knowing the exact 
psychological moment to appear, likewise to dis¬ 
appear when everybody else has bought and it is 
about to be his turn. 

He has stuck with the old round-table crowd all 
these years, and because of sentiment, or habit, 
has been permitted to consume our substance, 
though he is no longer any use to us, but just a 
clacking nuisance and dead expense, so to speak. 
We have been severe with him at times, chilly, 
sarcastic, even denunciatory, but without result. 
There came a day at last when we planned to give 
him a lesson—a positive, costly lesson—something 
he would remember. The plot, however, was not 
followed up, and we had about abandoned the 
idea when there arrived what seemed a special 
providence in the way of opportunity. 

Some months before, Hannerly, one of the best 
fellows in the old class, died. Hannerly, in fact, 
had been too good a fellow for his estate. He had 
always made money, but not much of it had clung 
to his bank account, and his widow had found her- 

139 


SINGLE REELS 


-J 


self with very little beyond some expensive jewelry 
which Hannerly had acquired in prosperous 
moments. We did not like the blank that Hanner- 
ly’s going had left at our club table and said we 
would do something for his widow. Among other 
things she had a very handsome solitaire diamond 
ring to dispose of—a ring that had cost six hun¬ 
dred dollars, but would have to go at a sacrifice if 
sold in the regular way. We said we would help 
her get something fancy out of the solitaire—that 
a raffle was the thing. 

The club does not permit raffles, so we left the 
number list and the tickets just down the block at 
the Earlmore Hotel, where Hannerly had been a 
good customer, and conducted delegations down 
there to buy them. The tickets were priced on a 
sliding scale, ranging from $ 6, through $5.99, $5*98 
down to the lowest, which was one cent. You 
reached into a box and drew out an envelope con¬ 
taining a numbered card and paid what the figure 
on it called for. It was an attractive scheme and 
would net Hannerly’s widow $1,803. If you don’t 
believe it, count it for yourself. It will take you 
only about four hours, and it will be a great satis¬ 
faction to prove me wrong. 

The plan was partly mine and I worked hard 
for it. Almost every time I engineered a crowd of 
fellows down to the Earlmore I took a chance or 
two myself and managed to pick out the $6 ticket 
and the $5.98 and several other sizable numbers, 
about sixty dollars’ worth in all. Some of the 

140 



THE MEANNESS OF PINCHETT 


other boys did about as well. Finally we got hold 
of Pinchett and took him almost by force to the 
Earlmore, where we explained the beauties of our 
plan. 

You never saw a man act as he did. He said 
he had never taken a chance in a lottery and never 
would—that it was against his principles—that he 
was sorry to see us engaged in a conspiracy that, 
whether it succeeded or failed, would be a blot on 
Hannerly’s memory. Never would he be a party 
to it. If Mrs. Hannerly was really in need, dire 
need, then he might consider some reputable 
method of assistance. Anyway, it was Hannerly’s 
own fault that- 

Then we sternly and firmly took him by the 
arm and marched him up to the box of envelopes 
and the list, and said, with set teeth, “Now you 
take one of those tickets and pay for it, without 
further comment.” He did it then, for he saw we 
were deeply in earnest. The number he drew was 
$1.39, and he paid that pitiful sum with bitter 
words, almost with tears. He didn’t mind spend¬ 
ing money, he said, but to throw it away in a 
thimble-rig game like that was a little too much. 

The last tickets were sold by Friday and we 
arranged that the drawing was to take place at 
the Earlmore the next evening. It was to be con¬ 
ducted by the hotel manager and two clerks, none 
of whom had been permitted to buy a ticket. No 
club member was even to be present; the winner 
would be notified by telephone. Thus did we 

141 




SINGLE REELS 


arrange it, in order that, while all was as fair as 
the day, we might still put one over on Jim 
Pinchett. 

We knew he would be on hand—wild horses 
could not keep him away. His one miserable 
chance in six hundred to get something for next 
to nothing would have raised him from his death¬ 
bed. Early in the evening, on the way down to 
the club, I said to the boy in the news-stand at 
the Earlmore: 

“Tommy, about an hour from now, say at 
seven-thirty, call up Mr. James Pinchett at the 
College Club and tell him that his number, one- 
thirty-nine, has drawn the Hannerly ring. You 
are not to elaborate, or tell who you are. Simply 
say: ‘Mr. Pinchett, I am speaking from the Earl¬ 
more. Your number, one-thirty-nine, has drawn 
the Hannerly ring.’ Better step outside to do it— 
just a little fun among ourselves, you understand 
—and here’s a dollar—don’t forget.” 

I knew he wouldn’t, for Tommy is one of the 
brightest. 

Most of the old crowd were already at the club, 
and had assembled at our round table in the alcove, 
Pinchett among them. They made room for me 
and we had something in the way of refreshments. 
Pinchett for once was cordially invited to join. 
Clarence Barnes even slapped him on the shoulder. 

“I shouldn’t wonder at all, Jim,” he said, “if 
you drew the Hannerly ring. That number of 
yours is a regular winner—has a thirteen in it and 

142 


THE MEANNESS OF PINCHETT 


adds up thirteen—you can’t beat it. You ought 
to order us all a good dinner now, on the strength 
of it.” 

But Pinchett said, glumly, “A fine prospect— 
one chance in six hundred, with a double thirteen 
for a hoodoo.” 

“Don’t you believe it, Jim; thirteens are always 
lucky.” Barnes turned to the rest of us. “I say, 
boys,” he added, “if any one at this table gets the 
ring he pays for a good dinner for the gang—is that 
a go? 

Everybody assented—everybody except Pin¬ 
chett, who hesitated. 

“What’s the matter, Jim? You’re not going to 
miss a good thing like that, are you? You’ve got 
only one chance in six hundred of having to pay 
for the dinner, and if you do pay you’ll be 
winner about five hundred to one on the ring. 
You’re in on a sure-thing gamble like that, aren’t 
you? 

Pinchett’s face wore a look of painful anxiety 
which became resignation. 

“I suppose so,” he said. “You fellows are 
always trying to work something to make a man 
spend money.” 

“That’s so, Jim. We always were a bad lot, 
weren’t we? But you were mighty good about 
squaring the circle for us in the old days, and 
that’s why we stand by you now. Here, boy, 
bring some cigars. What kind do you like, Jim? 
Have a good one.” 


143 


SINGLE REELS 


Pinchett mellowed under this attention. He 
smoked and talked genially of the old days. 
He grew more expansive and patronized us. He 
thought perhaps we had done well enough, con¬ 
sidering. Now and then I stole a glance at the 
time. The hour of his doom approached. 

It was just seven-thirty by the club clock when 
one of the waiters came to our table. 

“A call at the telephone for Mr. Pinchett,” he 
said. 

Pinchett rose rather hastily. The rest of us 
looked at one another with deep meaning; it was 
probably the call from Tommy. 

It was, in fact. Half a minute later Pinchett 
came plunging back, waving his arms and fairly 
beside himself. 

“I’ve won it! I’ve won it!” he whooped quite 
hysterically. “That hundred and thirty-nine was 
all right, Clarence, just as you said. A six-hundred- 
dollar ring for a dollar thirty-nine! I tell you, 
boys, it pays to be lucky—I tell you-” 

We deluged him with congratulations—heaped 
and piled them upon him. If he’d had any sense 
at all he would have smelled something wrong in 
our absurd demonstrations. But he swallowed 
everything—how we had always loved him; how 
tenderly we always felt, remembering the old days; 
how happy his good fortune made us. Members 
from other tables, seeing the commotion, came 
over and congratulated him. I really felt sorry for 
Pinchett, knowing what a rude and horrible 

H4 



THE MEANNESS OF PINCHETT 


awakening was to follow. It was truly pitiful. 
Presently he quieted down. 

“Now for that good dinner, Jim—best the club 
can afford, eh?” 

Pinchett face fell. He had forgotten that part 
of the bond. 

“Oh, say, extras weren’t in it,” he objected; 
“just the regular things, you know—the table 
d’hote. I didn’t mean-” 

But we rode him down, drowned him out, brow¬ 
beat him into submission, as we had done so long 
ago. It was really a very good dinner he gave us, 
with popping corks and perfectos, and just about 
the end of it we called on him for a speech. He 
made one in which he told us how glad he was to 
know that we still remembered and appreciated 
the little he had tried to do for us in the old days; 
how, after all, Hannerly had not done so badly in 
spending his money for trinkets, as it had given 
us a chance to do something for his widow, and 
how he had been only too glad to do his part. 

He was about to enlarge on this point when a 
waiter again appeared to summon him to the tele¬ 
phone. We were thankful for the interruption, 
but we hoped the call was nothing that would take 
Pinchett away from the club. The drawing was 
about due, and if Jim wasn’t there our joke would 
be just about wasted. We wanted to see him 
floored by the official news; to see him writhe and 
grow old; to watch his hair turn gray while we 
poured out extravagant sympathy and crocodile 

H5 



J 


SINGLE REELS 

tears. Thus would we wipe out a little of the old 
score. 

He was not called away. He was back again in 
quite a brief time—his face wearing a rather puz¬ 
zled, thoughtful look. 

“Do you know,” he said, as he came up, “that’s 
rather queer. That was the manager of the Earls- 
more who just called up. He told me again about 
my winning the ring, and I understood him to 
say the drawing had just Taken place.’ Curious, 
isn’t it?” 

Of those gathered around that table there wasn’t 
a soul who could utter a syllable. 

“Curious,” repeated James Pinchett, “but the 
main thing is I’ve won it.” 

And he had. 


N 


146 



AN EXCURSION IN MEMORY 

HAVE a memory like a time-lock safe. 

Treasures may be in it, but nothing short of 
dynamite would get them out until the lock goes 

off. Why, once- But never mind about that. 

Let us be more recent. This happened yesterday: 

One of the nicest women I know sent me two 
books to sign—two of my own books, she being 
a true and kind-hearted friend of the family, who 
understands authors. Nothing pleases an author 
so much as to be asked to sign his own books, 
books that have been bought and paid for in the 
open market. He would like to do it all day and 
give up authoring, or authorizing, whichever is 
the correct word. Then for pastime he could sit 
under the evening lamp and clip coupons. 

But there’s one thing an author does not like— 
no author of my acquaintance; he does not like 
to tie up and address and stamp packages. He 
dreads that formula—it is poison to him. He 
would rather take the books under his arm and 
put in the day, if necessary, delivering them 
himself. 

That is what I did. I took the two books 
which the kind lady had sent, after I had care¬ 
fully inscribed them and added some pretty senti¬ 
ment—something about not being “too proud to 

147 




SINGLE REELS 


write” or of that sparkling nature—and started 
for town, we being of the suburbs. I would not 
go directly to our friend’s house, I said. I would 
do some business errands first, and drop in with 
the books along in the afternoon, say about tea 
time. That is what I said, and, knowing my 
unvarying habit of memory, I added that I would 
never let them out of my sight for an instant dur¬ 
ing all that time. 

The morning went well enough. Of course I 
had to put the books down for a moment at the 
club while I was reading a letter, and it was not 
until I was two blocks away, getting on a car, 
that the time clock gave a little click that sent 
me sweating back for them. The letter required 
reply, and I had to put them down again in the 
telegraph office, but the clerk who counted the 
words whooped at me before I got quite out of 
reach, so that was all right. I had to put them 
down, of course, while I was getting a bite to eat, 
somewhere along Park Row, but the waiter caught 
me halfway across the square, making for the Sub¬ 
way extrance, and I only had to double his tip, 
which was a real pleasure. So it was a pretty 
good morning, as I say; I had held faithfully to the 
books, and it seemed unlikely that anything could 
happen to them now. The Subway would take me 
very near to a friend’s room on Fifty-ninth Street, 
where I would rest and spruce up a bit, and the lady 
of the books lived but a few doors away. I could 
manage the rest safely, without doubt. Ah, me! 

148 






A LARGE HIGHLY COLORED LADY 
WITH A SMALL NEAR-SIGHTED DOG 










r 


f 










AN EXCURSION IN MEMORY 


I bought a paper and read it on the way uptown. 
I could recall that much, afterward; also, that the 
books were then lying on my lap. That is why it 
seemed unaccountable later that I should not have 
them—I mean after I got to my friend’s room and 
had rested a little and was about ready to call on 
the lady down the block. I was just pulling my 
tie into shape when I realized with a slight chill 
that the lady’s books were not lying on the table 
in front of me. Neither were they on the chair 
beside it, nor on the other chair by the window, 
nor on the dresser, nor on the floor. My friend 
is a downtown man—hours nine to five—so I 
could not ask him about it, or blame him. Oh, 
I had left them on the train, of course. After 
lugging them about all day, now, on the last lap, 
I had lost them. Profanity is poor consolation at 
such a time, but it’s about all we have. 

Now where were they? In time they would get 
to the “Lost and Found,” no doubt. I did not 
seem to fear that any one would be fascinated by 
them enough to lose his moral balance and carry 
them home. No, they would be handed in. But 
Lost and Found was somewhere in the dark spaces 
below Fourteenth Street, and meant time and 
heavy effort. I would telephone my publisher to 
send up two more copies post haste—special mes¬ 
senger, and dern the expense! 

But Central rang and rang, and no publisher. 
I begged her to try again, and to keep on trying. 
Finally we got something; a dusty voice said, 

149 




SINGLE REELS 


“ Well, what do you want? ” I explained feverishly. 
The voice hemmed and balked and seemed to be 
spitting out ashes. Then it said: “This is Satur¬ 
day, and there ain’t nobody here afternoons. Fm 
the janitor.” 

“ But—but don’t you think you could find two 
of those books and bring them up? I’ll give 
you- 

I forget what I was going to give him; but no 
matter, he didn’t wait. 

“Books nothin '!” he interrupted, impolitely, 
and I felt that the interview was closed. I must 
hunt up those lost books—there was no other 
way. I have a prompt nature. I set out 
immediately. 

The ticket-seller at Fifty-ninth Street explained 
that very likely my property had not yet reached 
Lost and Found. It would be held at the upper 
terminal he thought, to go down in the evening with 
the usual daily consignment of such stuff. I was 
on an uptown train before he was through talking. 

There wasn’t much to do, so I put in my time 
furtively observing a large, highly colored lady 
and a small, drab, near-sighted dog who sat 
opposite, instead of in the limousine where they 
clearly belonged. It was not permissible to bring 
dogs into Subway trains, and I reasoned that this 
one must have come in under his mistress’s ample 
sealskin. Her cool, not to say brazen, indifference 
to the flagrant irregularity of his presence was 
impressive. 

ISO 



AN EXCURSION IN MEMORY 

But it was the dog that interested me. He was 
such an inadequate specimen of all that I felt a 
dog should be. He had an ingrowing face, abortive 
legs, and, aside from his hair, was of no bulk to 
speak of. Possibly he weighed a pound. Such 
dogs come from Peking, I am told, where it is also 
fashionable to bind women’s feet. 

He was a listless dog. He slept on the seat by 
the luminous lady, and only opened his myopic 
eyes for a second or two, now and then, to stare 
blearily in my direction. He fascinated me. I 
became so absorbed in him that I temporarily 
forgot his proprietor. I wasn’t even fully con¬ 
scious when, at a station somewhere up in the 
hundred and sixties, that fine person rose and 
went out. A number of others crowded out then, 
and several crowded in. The train was about to 
move on when I realized, dear me! that careless 
woman had forgotten her dog! Think of forget¬ 
ting a dog! 

I am a prompt person, as I say—more prompt 
than reflective. It might have occurred to me 
that by merely lingering in the neighborhood of 
a lost dog I might regain my own property; but 
it didn’t. Nothing useful ever occurs to me at 
such a time—I just act. Indeed, as I think now, 
I did not recall my own loss at the moment, or 
why I was on the train in that unusual section of 
the city. What I did was to scoop up the property 
of the calcimined lady and make a bound for the 
door. It was more than half closed, but the guard, 

151 



SINGLE REELS 


observing my charge, hastily let me squeeze 
through. The object of my search was not on the 
platform. She had already ascended to the 
pavement. 

There were two stairways, and I picked the 
wrong one. Some seconds later I was in the 
middle of the street, looking with considerable 
anxiety in one direction after another for a large 
vision of sealskin, sweeping plumes, and red hair, 
gripping meantime that insipid dog. He had 
been asleep when deserted, but, being no longer 
asleep, he was inclined to protest, kicking with 
surprising vigor, for one of his parts. I also made 
some inquiries, but without result. Then of a 
sudden I caught a glimpse of red and plumes and 
bounded after it. I had run full half a block before 
I discovered that it was not she. A wave of 
despair swept over me; I had annexed that dog 
permanently. Many years I had escaped owning 
a dog. All kinds have been offered me by loving 
friends who were going to Europe, or into matri¬ 
mony, or were otherwise retiring from the dog 
business—mastiffs, St. Bernards, bulls—noble dogs 
that I have fondly but firmly declined. Now here 
I was saddled with a dog, and such a dog! 

I turned down a side street and walked quite 
fast, thinking intently. It was a dull, thick day, 
and nothing about the locality seemed cheerful. 
Passers regarded me curiously. If I only could 
give him to one of them; but I did not quite 
know how to go about it. It would be unusual, 

152 


AN EXCURSION IN MEMORY 


I thought, to step up to a perfect stranger on the 
street and say, “Won’t you let me give you a 
dog?” Perhaps I could leave him in a hall, and 
kindly souls would find him. Of course I might 
have taken him to the upper terminal—it was 
where I was bound for, anyway; only memory 
had its time clock on again, and I had no real 
notion of where I was going, or why. I only 
realized that dog—the bandy-legged, bulgy-eyed, 
incompetent little shrimp that was struggling and 
snuffling under my arm. 

I was passing an entrance to a sort of court, 
just then, the back way to a lofty apartment-house 
—a home for the rich and great. I imagined I 
heard children’s voices in there—children playing. 
Ah, just the thing! I would slip in part way, put 
him down, and gently shoo him in that direction. 
Then I would go away. Those dear children 
would love him. 

But he would not shoo. When I placed him 
carefully on the cement and softly shooed, he 
seemed to make up his mind that I was a pretty 
good sort, after all, and that he would play with 
me. Soon he began describing half-circles a little 
distance away; then he gave a weak little bark of 
pure joy. 

“Go in there,” I breathed, urgently; “go to a 
happy home. We are not for each other.” 

He seated himself, regarded me gravely, and 
gave another of those feeble, yapping barks. I 
picked him up again. I recalled for the moment 

153 



SINGLE REELS 


that I had other business and must attend to it. 
But I didn’t—not immediately. Before I could 
turn I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I was 
startled; but it was all right, it was only a police 
officer. He said: 

“What are you doing with that dog?” 

The italics were his, and for the moment I 
could not clearly remember just what I was doing 
with that dog. Then I seemed to recall that I 
had been trying to find the owner, and said so. 

“In this alley, I suppose?” he commented with 
deep sarcasm. “You come with me.” 

It seemed best to go. I hadn’t much else to do 
just then, anyway. He took the dog under his 
other arm and we started into the street. Half¬ 
way down the block, headed in our direction, and 
a good deal winded from rapid movement was 
the large, bright lady of fur and feathers. I 
realized then that she had discovered her loss and 
put the law on my trail—easy enough to follow, 
for I had not been unobserved. She came up, 
panting heavily. 

“Oh, ’oo pressus, darlin’ doggums Chee- 
foojums,” she gurgled. “Did old, bad man carry 
him off—and nice officer find him? Now bad man 
go to jail—yes, he will!” 

I found her voice distinctly disagreeable. It 
stimulated me to be severe. 

“Madame,” I said, “you carelessly walked off 
and left your dog on the train, where it had no 
right to be in the first place. I ran after you with 

i54 


AN EXCURSION IN MEMORY 


it, but you had disappeared. I should think if 
you cared so much for your precious Chee-foojums 
you would try to remember him. ,, 

“Lady,” said the blue-coated hero, “do you 
wish to enter a charge against this man ? ” 

But she was paying not the slightest attention 
to either of us. We had reached the highly ornate 
entrance of an apartment adjacent to the Subway 
entrance just then, and she disappeared through 
its swinging doors. As they closed behind her my 
animosity vanished. Had she not relieved me of 
doggums Chee-foojums? Few angels could have 
done more. My captor regarded me sternly. 

“You may go,” he said, “but don’t let me catch 
you around this neighborhood again.” 

His instructions were unnecessary. It was not 
an interesting neighborhood. On a gloomy Decem¬ 
ber afternoon it was depressing. I plunged down 
the Subway stairs and took the first train, regard¬ 
less of direction. My time lock loosened up just 
then and I realized why I was there; also, that I 
was headed back for Fifty-ninth Street. 

“It has been an interesting day,” I said. “I 
will now go back to my friend’s room, leave him 
a note of thanks, and return to the suburbs and 
Elizabeth. Next week 'I will visit Lost and 
Found, or get two perfectly fresh books from 
my publishers and try it again.” 

It was dark when I reached my friend’s room, 
it being about five, and a dull winter day, as I 
have said. I therefore touched the electric button 

155 


r 


SINGLE REELS 

by the door as I entered. Then I noticed some¬ 
thing. It was a newspaper—the one I had read 
on the train—long, how long, ago—coming uptown. 
Also, it was wrapped around something—two 
books—my books, the ones I had carried about 
all day for the kind lady down the street. Why, 
of course. I remembered now, perfectly: I had 
placed them there as I entered the first time, in a 
chair by the door, to have them handy. It is 
always dim back there, owing to the screen, even 
on a bright day, which accounts, of course, for my 
having overlooked them later. Still, I have been 
known to look straight at a thing without seeing 
it—so Elizabeth says. 

I did not let go of them again until I stood in 
the drawing-room of their owner. 

“Oh,” she ventured, “how good of you to bring 
them yourself. I’m afraid you found it a trouble.” 

“Not in the least,” I said. 


156 




THE UNITED WORKMAN 


/^\NE morning our mason dropped in, really 
intending to work. At least, such was his 
statement. He had visited us a number of times 
before, merely to look over the ground and com¬ 
ment on the plans of our new addition. This 
time he meant business. He was dressed for labor, 
and anxious to get at it. 

I wondered why he did not do so. I could not 
see why he should merely look down into the 
opening in the floor where the fireplace was to go, 
whistling softly, meanwhile, as if he expected the 
chimney to grow to that accompaniment. Pres¬ 
ently I ventured to ask if there were any special 
reasons why active operations should not begin. 
He gave me a brief glance. 

“Can’t work without material,” he said. 

“Oh, but the brick and stuff are just outside. 
I thought you knew that.” 

“I do know it. I’m waiting for my helper to 
bring ’em in.” 

“Oh yes, of course,” I assented weakly; “I forgot 
the helper”—which was true, though I did not see 
why our mason should notbring in a fewthings him¬ 
self—enough to do until his belated helper arrived. 

I summonded up more courage—a good deal 
this time. 


157 




SINGLE REELS 


“But—that is—couldn’t you bring in a few 
things, as a starter?” I asked. 

He smiled at my ignorance. 

“Can’t do that,” he said; “union won’t allow 
it. 

“Oh, the union—I see.” 

He nodded. More precious moments flitted. I 
went to the door to gaze up and down for the 
delinquent. 

“Look here,” I said, “I’m anxious to get this 
work along. I’ll bring in some stuff for you.” 

“Sorry, but that won’t go, either. You don’t 
belong to the union.” 

Without doubt I had a good deal to learn. I 
could see, too, that I had made a mistake in not 
joining the hod-carriers’ union. Perhaps it was 
not too late to remedy this. 

“Is that fellow likely to turn up at all?” I 
asked. 

Our mason became dubious. 

“Don’t look so,” he said. “Mebbe this is one 
of his off days. He has ’em.” 

I then inquired upon the matter of unions, and 
the proper method of joining one. It was explained 
to me that the applicant received a card at head¬ 
quarters that entitled him to recognition. It 
seemed to me that a card like that would be a 
useful thing to have, not necessarily as a means of 
livelihood, but for use in an emergency like the 
present. , 

“I suppose I could get one,” I said. 

158 



THE UNITED WORKMAN 


The mason thought it possible. I am inclined 
to be impulsive and to act quickly. Five minutes 
later I was on the way downtown, and within 
half an hour had been directed to a union 
headquarters. 

The clerk in charge regarded me doubtfully. 
My explanation did not altogether satisfy him. 

“Have you ever done any carrying?” he asked. 

“Carrying! Well, I should think I have. I 
am a suburban resident. I have been carrying 
bundles and ashes and a heavy mortgage for the 
last five years.” 

Eventually he gave me the card. I tried not to 
feel, or to show, my new importance as I journeyed 
homeward. 

I hurried in to where the mason was still wait¬ 
ing. The helper had not come. 

“Now we’ll get at it,” I rejoiced, and displayed 
my credentials. 

There was real pity in the mason’s face. 

“Why, now, that’s too bad,” he said. “You 
have gone to the wrong place. That ain’t our 
union at all.” 

“There are two, then. I didn’t know.” He 
nodded assent. 

“But if I have this I’m union-label and can 
work, can’t I?” 

“Nope, not with me. Not on this job, either,” 
he added. “The other men would strike.” 

I did not put into words my reflections upon 
this development. I simply got explicit directions, 

159 


SINGLE REELS 


and within an hour I was back, this time with 
qualifications that entitled me to carry in my 
own brick and mortar, with a view to having it 
used in my own house for the construction of my 
own chimney. It was luncheon hour by this time, 
and both my boss and myself ate heartily in the 
prospect of a heavy afternoon’s work. 

I was on hand when the whistle blew, dressed 
for the part. My boss gave me an order or two, 
also a few simple instructions as to methods, 
though I could see he did this rather uneasily, 
regarding the carpenters and tinners furtively 
meanwhile. 

“There you are,” he said, when the mortar had 
attained a consistency that agreed with his ideas. 
“Get next, now, and let’s push this job along. 
There’s been enough time wasted on it.” 

I “got next,” and for four hours knew the happi¬ 
ness of honest toil and of seeing my chimney grow. 
My boss said he had never had a more active 
helper. He even hinted that he would engage me 
permanently if I thought of going into the con¬ 
struction line as a regular thing. However, I 
resigned next morning in favor of his regular 
assistant, who appeared at a reasonable hour, 
though somewhat depressed, perhaps from remorse. 
I could see at once that he was not so energetic a 
workman as myself, and why the mason had been 
. willing to exchange. 

Meantime my man for nailing on laths, who 
was to have come that morning, did not appear. 

160 


THE UNITED WORKMAN 


The plasterers were engaged for the next morning, 
and, unless the lathing was done, they would be 
delayed. I besought one of my carpenters. 

“Suppose you let that outside work go,” I 
said, “and put these lath on.” 

“Can’t do it,” he said; “ union won’t let me.” 

“Why, you’re a carpenter.” 

“Yep, but that’s different.” 

“Urn! Yes, I see. Well, I’ll just put those 
lath on myself. I learned carpentering as a boy, 
and I can handle a hammer yet.” 

My boss of the day before interfered at this 
point. 

“Sorry,” he said, “but you can’t do it, either. 
There’ll be a strike ordered if you do.” 

“But I belong to the union now,” I argued. 

“Not the lathers’ union.” 

“Then I’ll join.” 

There were difficulties about this. It is not 
customary for one man to belong to an aggrega¬ 
tion of unions, though there appeared to be no 
well-defined rule to the contrary. Besides, my 
capabilities as well as my necessities seemed excep¬ 
tional. An hour later I had another card in my 
pocket, and was nailing on laths and pounding my 
fingers at union rates. 

I should have had the job finished by quitting 
time, but, not being an adept, the whistle blew 
too soon for me. I went right on nailing, seeing 
it was my own job. It was the boss carpenter 
who interfered. 

161 


SINGLE REELS 


“Here,” he called, “knock off.” 

“Eve got to finish this to-night,” I answered, 
whacking a finger that had become almost immune 
to pain. 

“Can’t work overhours. The union won’t al¬ 
low it.” 

“Oh, blow the-” 

“That is, except at double wages, of course. If 
you can’t get double wages for overtime, you have 
to quit when the whistle blows.” 

I considered this a minute. I was a rather poor 
lather, and could not have got my present wages 
if I had not belonged to the union. Certainly I 
was not worth double rates. * Still, there were 
those plasterers coming in the morning. 

“All right,” I said; “the owner has agreed to 
the terms.” 

It was far in the night when those laths were all 
on. Elizabeth helped me after the baby was 
asleep. She held the lamp and handed me laths 
and nails. All at once I remembered that she 
didn’t belong to the union. 

“Look here,” I said, “I’ve got to strike. If 
you work on this job without a card, I can’t.” 

She set down the lamp quite willingly and 
started for the door. She had already threatened 
to go every time I pounded my finger and com¬ 
mented on the occurrence. 

“Wait!” I said. “I have just recalled the fact 
that we are one. I don’t know what the rules 
are in such cases, but for to-night, at least, my 

162 



THE UNITED WORKMAN 


card will serve. You may resume the lamp and 
pass up a few nails.” 

I was rather glad, I think, when my plasterer 
came next morning without his helper. The man 
was sick and had sent a substitute, who did not 
appear. It seemed a bad season for helpers. I 
said it did not matter—that I had given up busi¬ 
ness, anyway, until my house should be done, 
and that I would mix and carry the necessary 
mud. I had an idea, of course, that my diploma 
as general hod-carrier would warrant my under¬ 
taking these similar duties. But this was a mis¬ 
take. It required another trip to headquarters 
and new credentials. This was becoming inter¬ 
esting. I was acquiring a collection of labor cards, 
which, it seemed to me, might be worth while to 
complete. Besides, I could feel that somewhere 
down deep there was the growing ambition to 
become an entire union within myself. 

I extended my sphere of usefulness. When my 
painter hinted that it was a good morning for 
tomcods to bite, I told him to go fishing, by all 
means, and, to continue the job, allied myself to 
the brush-swingers’ union, for which I was fitted 
by the conditions of my active early life. Then 
I joined the itinerant tinkers’ union in order to 
patch a small but persistent leak in the dishpan, 
the lamp fitters’ union to enable me to screw a 
new burner on the kitchen candelabra, and the 
hose nozzlers’ union when I wanted to fit a washer 
on the garden sprinkler. 

163 


SINGLE REELS 


When I had joined the fire makers’ unions, in 
in order to care for my furnace properly, I pro¬ 
ceeded to project a few unions on my own account. 
The lawn mowers’ union was one of these, also 
the shoe polishers’ union, and the ancient and 
honorable order of dish wipers, the last named 
during the absence of our household attache. 

My enthusiasm was contagious. Into my new 
personality of the United Workman my fellow 
employees were quite ready to merge the identity 
of the owner, whom we abused roundly and 
declared that shorter hours and more pay, with 
a complete recognition of our union and destruc¬ 
tion to all others, was what was needed. 

We discussed other matters. My fellow work¬ 
men promulgated the idea that an owner could 
not consistently bring other than union articles on 
his premises. When it was discovered that my 
lawn mower was not of this brand, it was evicted. 
There was a man with a good union mower who 
had expressed a willingness to join any union or 
anything else for the privilege of mowing my 
lawn. His doing this work was somewhat contrary 
to Elizabeth’s ideas of economy, but I felt justified 
now in engaging him, in order to avoid the strike 
which seemed imminent, and which I should have 
been obliged to join. From time to time my asso¬ 
ciates examined our household articles, but when 
they objected to certain plates and pieces of fur¬ 
niture, all of which they felt at liberty to overhaul 
at will, I averted disaster by explaining that these 

164 


THE UNITED WORKMAN 


were known as antiques and had been manufac¬ 
tured perhaps several generations before the coun¬ 
try had experienced the blessings of perfect union 
as understood from the industrial point of view. 

Nevertheless, it was not in the nature of things 
that our job should be completed without 
upheaval. Elizabeth went out shopping one 
morning, and during the noon hour there was 
a new go-cart for the baby delivered at the rear 
door. The workmen saw it as they returned from 
dinner, and stopped to examine it. I saw them 
view it at various angles, and finally turn it bot¬ 
tom upward. They halted me as I came out. 
McManus the carpenter was spokesman. 

“This ain’t union-label,” he said, pointing an 
accusing finger at the small vehicle. 

I joined them in the examination. If there 
was any label, I failed to find it. My fellow 
workmen shook their heads. 

I made a feeble effort to modify the offense and 
avert disaster. 

“But don’t you think this is really outside of 
our agreement?” I said. “You see, the owner 
didn’t buy this, and the owner’s wife and baby 
are another matter.” 

But this would not do at all. 

I was delegated as a committee of one to wait 
on the lady; but it was unnecessary, for she came 
to the door just then, the baby in her arms. 

“I am sorry there is going to be a strike,” she 
said, quite cheerfully. (She had evidently over- 

165 


SINGLE REELS 


heard the discussion.) “I did look at union carts, 
but they did not please me and the baby howled 
when I put him into one, so we bought this. Mr. 
McManus/’ she asked, suddenly, “is that new 
straw hat of yours union made?” 

McManus did not seem to get hold of his words 
properly. He had to make several rather poor 
efforts before he managed to say that he thought 
it was—that the dealer had told him so. 

“Oh, I see. You took the dealer’s word for it. 
The union label had dropped off, I suppose.” 

A great relief was in McManus’s face as he 
swore fervently that this was the precise truth. 
Giles, the mason, was the next victim. 

“Those new shoes of yours, Mr. Giles, they are 
union made, of course. You need not remove 
them to show the label. I will take your word 
for it.” 

I fear Mr. Giles did not perjure himself with 
very good grace. Elizabeth then directed her 
battery upon Mullins, the second carpenter. 

“You are smoking a union cigar, of course, Mr. 
Mullins. A good union man like you would never 
be seen smoking at scab cigar.” 

Mullins’s reply was a real effort. 

“Well, mum,” he managed to say at last— 
“that is, mum, no—not if he could help it, mum.” 

I felt called upon to interfere. 

“This,” I said, ‘ ‘is becoming very personal. 
The matter under discussion was the pwner’s 
rights, not those of the workmen. I don’t think 

166 


THE UNITED WORKMAN 


our constitution covers the particular items you 
mention.” 

“Constitution?” Elizabeth smiled. “Oh, your 
constitution! Well, there is another constitution 
you may have heard of, and there is something in 
it about equal rights and liberties, and the pursuit 
of happiness. I don’t remember just the wording. 
I learned it a good while ago at school.” She 
swung the go-cart around and turned down the 
path, the baby looking at us and waving his fists. 
“We’ll be back when the strike is over!” she 
called, as she turned the corner. Then she disap¬ 
peared, and left us regarding nothing in particular 
and saying nothing at all. McManus, it is true, 
did make an apparent effort for speech, and per¬ 
haps Giles had a similar inclination. Neither 
reached the point of utterance. 

“See here,” I said, suddenly addressing the 
others; “perhaps, after all, we’d better arbitrate 
this.” 

There seemed to be no dissent. I caught Eliza¬ 
beth just as she got to the pavement. 

“Hold on,” I called. “Let’s discuss this 
matter.” 

She halted without any apparent reluctance. 
We were around the corner now, where my asso¬ 
ciates could not see us. 

“Our friends,” I said, “are in favor of arbitra¬ 
tion, and, of course, a willingness to arbitrate is 
always a good sign in a case of this sort.” 

She held up her finger. 

167 


SINGLE REELS 


“Listen; they’re already at it,” she whispered. 

And it was true. There was a sound of hammer 
and saw and trowel as we turned back up the path. 

AFTERWORD 

Eventually our job came to an end. It is true, 
it required ten weeks instead of the ten days’ 
contract time; also, that almost at the close we 
were obliged to remove some carefully set tiling 
when we discovered that it had been made in a 
non-union factory, and to replace it with something 
rather less satisfying. But these things are mere 
detail. I could quite see the reason for changing 
the tile by the time we came to it, even at the 
cost of good taste and several dollars in money. 

Indeed, I consider myself a past master now 
in the code and diplomacy of general union con¬ 
struction, and I contemplate soliciting employment 
in that direction. I am also qualified to do any 
sort of work that comes along. That is to say, I 
belong to all the unions. I can do any odd job of 
building or painting or patching or mending that 
comes my way. If any job comes along that my 
credentials don’t cover, I’ll join another union. I 
don’t profess to be a skillful workman. It is not 
necessary that I should be. What I lack in skill 
I make up in union. Union is the necessary 
requirement, and union wages, with double pay 
for overtime. Anybody having a house, or a part 
of a house, to build, or even a roof to patch, or a 
door to hang, or a glass to put in, or a porch to 

168 


THE UNITED WORKMAN 


paint, or a furnace to clean, or a lawn to mow, or 
a baby to nurse, or clothes to hang out, or any¬ 
thing else under the shining sun, may call or 
communicate with me at the old address. I will 
not promise to do any of these jobs as well as the 
owners themselves could do them, or to get through 
at any specified time, or not to be called out on a 
strike when the job is half done, but I will promise 
not to allow any of my various capacities to con¬ 
flict and so produce a strike within myself; also, 
that whatever labor I perform shall be union labor, 
and that no other man of my union—of any of my 
unions — can refuse to remain under the roof 
because I am there. And this is a great thing. 
You will not realize how great a thing it really is 
until you have been brought suddenly face to face 
with the union problem in your own home. When 
this occurs, do not hesitate. Send at once for the 
union of unions, the original United Workman. 


169 


REFORMING VERNY 


VOU know Percy, of course—Percy of the 
A evening paper—that harmless, happy-hearted 
bounder and bluffer, that “big washing and small 
hang-out” who with his friend Ferdie is always 
trying to “put something over” in the way of a 
large impression, and so rarely (too rarely for our 
happiness) escapes disaster. Our sympathy is with 
Percy and his friend—wrongly, perhaps, but it is 
there. They are such cheerful pikers and, in the 
long run, so square. 

I am personally acquainted with Percy—not the 
identical Percy, but a member of his family, I am 
sure. He has the same lightsome nature, the same 
longing to be known as 'among the elect, the same 
quick rebound and recovery. There is a difference, 
however. Our Percy, whose real name is Mr. Ver¬ 
non Disbrow, is not in “gents’ furnishing,” but 
hardware, and his great side specialty is high 
finance. Verny has long been a boarder with us 
at the old London Terrace place on West Twenty- 
third Street, where I sometimes sojourn when 
Elizabeth is absent, and his great specialty is, or 
was, “doing something handsome in the Street.” 
His old friend and schoolmate, “Reggie Keene,” 
who fairly wallowed in wealth, with a seat on the 
Stock Exchange, was always letting him in on 

170 



OH, RUT YOU MIGHT GIVE US A CHECK, YOU KNOW!” SAID MISS MITTENS 











REFORMING VERNY 


something very choice, with the result that every 
little while Percy—Verny, I mean—came home 
with his chest out and a roll that would choke a 
horse, which he managed to exhibit in the course 
of the evening, jerked it out quite accidentally, 
asked the company’s pardon, and passed it off 
with a wave of the hand and some airy persiflage 
about “a little flurry in Tonopah” or something— 
“just a minor deal with Reggie Keene—noth¬ 
ing much, a few hundred, too late for the bank 
to-night.” 

That always impressed us. We being impecuni¬ 
ous, credulous lambs, the sight of much money 
awed us. Also, when Verny arrayed himself in 
glad splendor, and told us that he was going out 
to dine with Reggie Keene and his set, we believed 
him. Certainly he looked the part. 

But then we learned to doubt. A newspaper 
chap came to London Terrace, and nothing seemed 
hidden from his X-ray vision. He had been there 
about a week when Verny came into the parlor 
one night just before dinner, clad in radiant 
evening garments. 

“Well, well!” we said. “What’s on tonight?” 

Verny smiled blandly, waved his hands lightly, 
and brought them together with a mellifluous 
little smack. 

“Oh, not much—just a bit of evening gayety 
with Reggie Keene, my old schoolmate, you know; 
sort of a quiet celebration—dinner, opera, and 
that sort. 

171 



SINGLE REELS 


His handkerchief came out with a flourish and 
a fat bundle with a hundred-dollar wrapper 
tumbled on the floor. Miss Pankers, who does 
library work, said, “Oh!” and handed it rever¬ 
ently to its owner. 

“Ah, thanks, Miss Pankers. No great matter, 
I assure you. Result of a little quick turn this 
morning in Axle Preferred—one of those war 
babies, you know. Phone tip from Reggie. Too 
late to bank, unfortunately. Probably most of it 
will go to-night. On me, this time, you see. So— 
so. Pleasant evening, everybody.” 

The door closed and Miss Mittens, who does 
something in publicity and is a pretty live person 
herself, said, thoughtfully: 

“I wonder if it’s always really as he says. But 
he is amusing.” 

Nobody ventured anything for a minute or two, 
then O’Shay of the Star said, “Does it happen 
like this often?” 

“Well, quite often; say once a month.” 

“Always the same way?” 

“Oh no! It isn’t always when he’s going out. 
Sometimes it’s when he’s playing cards and is hunt¬ 
ing in his pocket for a paper to keep score on. 
Sometimes it happens when hepulls out his gloves.” 

“Is it always in the evening?” 

“Well, it’s been known to occur in the morning 
when he was starting to business.” 

“Did you ever check up the stocks to see if they 
had really gone up, as he said?” 

172 


REFORMING VERNY 


“Oh yes! He frequently shows us that himself.” 

“Well,” said O’Shay, “you’re an easy bunch. 
What he does is to look over the Wall Street edi¬ 
tion before he comes home and pick out some stock 
that has had a boost during the day. Then he 
gets his bundle of hard-earned savings from the 
office safe to throw his bluff with. No stock deal is 
closed with cash. In a thousand transactions he‘d 
have no excuse for handling any real money. Does 
that mazuma of his always look about the same?” 

We admitted that it generally did have a pretty 
familiar look. There was always a large bill in view. 

“Same old wad every time,” laughed O’Shay. 
“Brown paper and dollar bills inside. He’s a 
merry bluffer, that friend of yours. We ought to 
have some fun with him. Vernon Disbrow—huh! 
Probably started as plain Jim Smith.” 

We felt that we were going to doubt Verny after 
that. O’Shay had shaken our faith in his high 
finance. Very likely even Reggie Keene was a 
myth. O’Shay said there was no such member of 
the Stock Exchange—that if he had a seat any¬ 
where it was on the Curb. Of course he might be 
a member of an Exchange firm, O’Shay said, but 
we agreed that even this was most unlikely. 
Once started on the road to doubt, we had taken 
a through ticket. . . . 

“I hope, Mr. Disbrow, you and Reggie Keene 
didn’t spend all that Axle Preferred last night,” 
said Miss Mittens, next morning at breakfast. 

“Just about, Miss Mittens. A box with the 

173 



SINGLE REELS 


Misses Van Beekman, refreshments with vintage 
’ninety-eight, then bridge at Reggie’s club later 
are rather expensive diversions. Nothing in the 
long run, of course, but a neat little sum for one 
evening.” 

“I suppose that, after all, you couldn’t spare 
me a dollar for the Red Cross drive? I’m one of 
the collectors, you know.” 

Verny barely hesitated, then pulled a single 
mussy dollar from his vest pocket and handed it 
over with quite a grand sweep. This was disap¬ 
pointing. We had hoped it would be necessary 
for him either to decline or produce the main 
package. 

“Too bad,” he said, “you didn’t remind me of 
it last night. Could have made it fifty then just 
as easy as one.” 

“Oh, but you might give us a check, you know!” 
said Miss Mittens. 

“Why—why, yes—yes indeed! Only you see” 
—feeling in one breast pocket and another—“I 
haven’t my check-book here. I might do it to¬ 
night if I don’t have to use all my ready funds in 
a deal that Reggie has planned for this week. 
Something big next time.” 

“Oh, Mr. Disbrow, you are in so many big 
things! It must be wonderful to be a man and 
in great financial deals. By the way, what is 
your bank?” 

“Ah—eh—why, the City National!” 

“How splendid to be in a bank like that! Oh, 

*74 



REFORMING VERNY 


I wonder if you wouldn’t give me a letter of intro¬ 
duction! I want to open an account, and I’d just 
love to be in a really big bank.” 

Mr. Disbrow repressed a tendency to cough, 
holding his napkin to his lips. 

“De-delighted, Miss Mittens, delighted, I assure 
you. Only, you see, the president himself told me 
only last week that they were not taking any new 
accounts—personal accounts—they are so over¬ 
whelmed. I thought they might be asking me to 
go next, but he put his arm over my shoulder. 
‘Verny, my boy,’ he said, ‘we mean to keep the 
members of our home family.’” 

Mr. Disbrow rose and, waving us a gay good- 
by, departed to his daily task. Miss Mittens said, 
as she folded the mussy dollar: 

“The very next time he exhibits that package 
of money I’m going to get hold of it. I want to 
see what it’s stuffed with.” 

But perhaps Verny w^as a mind-reader. Per¬ 
haps he had sensed the astuteness of O’Shay. The 
next time the market got excited he did not do 
the handkerchief-and-bundle trick. 

“Quite a killing on the Street to-day,” he said. 
“It’s pretty nice to be on the inside when that 
sort of thing is pulled off. Baldwin ten points to 
the good to-night. It will do better, but I decided 
to sell, and advised Reggie Keene to. ‘ Reggie, old 
man,’ I said, ‘let’s give the next man a chance.’ 
‘Right you are,’ he said, and let his holdings go 
with mine.” 


175 


SINGLE REELS 


“Oh, Mr. Disbrow, won’t you show us all that 
money?” Miss Mittens asked, sweetly. 

“Not to-night, fair one. The transaction was 
late. Settlement to-morrow.” 

“Let us all in, next time, won’t you?” said 
O’Shay. “Your friend Reggie won’t mind your 
passing a good thing along—just to a few indigent 
friends.” 

Verny put up his finger. 

“Reggie Keene,” he said, “wouldn’t give a hint 
to his own brother a day in advance. / never 
know until the very day—sometimes not till the 
hour. No—no, not Reggie.” 

But the next evening Mr. Disbrow came in 
rather late and with impressive importance. He 
was literally on tiptoe—his finger at his lips. 

“What is it this time, Verny?” called Miss 
Mittens, with lively familiarity. 

Verny extended his hands as if pronouncing a 
benediction. 

“’Sh!” he said, solemnly. “You folks wanted a 
tip—I’ll give you one. Listen!” his voice falling to a 
hoarse whisper. “It’s oil! Buy — Big — Punch! They 
haven’t struck it yet, but they’ve got the ground 
and are boring, and when they hit it the stock will 
jump to ten, fifty, a hundred dollars a share—stock 
that can be had to-day for a dollar. There was a 
fellow in the store, in the paint department, named 
Billy Barker. He went to Texas last year and got 
into oil. He’s here now looking after machinery 
and told me to-day about Big Punch. He says 

176 



REFORMING VERNY 


they’ve got the location for a gusher. He says 
they’re likely to strike it any time. It looks good 
tome. Think of it! A thousand shares at a dollar 
a share, on a twenty-per-cent margin. Two- 
hundred-dollar gamble with the chance to win a 
hundred thousand. Now if you want a real tip, 
there is one, and don’t say I didn’t tell you! Easy 
money, eh?” , 

If Verny expected a sensation he was disap¬ 
pointed. The wave of excitement that followed 
his revelation was quite feeble. 

Miss Pankers said, “How wonderful!” 

Miss Mittens said, “Oh, boy!” 

O’Shay said, “Sure, Verny, we’ll all be rich 
in a week.” The rest of us went on with the 
game, and most of us forgot it before morning. 
We were on to Verny. As for Big Punch, we 
had never heard of it and didn’t believe any 
body else had. Verny’s mania was taking a new 
form. 

Perhaps our gay friend seemed a little silent, a 
little less buoyant, for a few days after that, but 
war news was not very good just then and we were 
all rather depressed. O’Shay did prod him a little 
one night with: 

“Well, how’s Big Punch to-day, Mr. Magnate? 
Stock soaring yet? I’ve been expecting any night 
to see you come pushing a wheelbarrow-load of 
money. By the way, where is that old wad you 
used to sling around here ? It’s been rather scarce 
since I came.” 


177 


SINGLE REELS 


Verny was clearly intimidated by the sophisti¬ 
cated O’Shay. Nevertheless, he could answer. 
“It hasn’t seemed safe to have money around 
since then,” he said, dryly, which rather left the 
laugh on O’Shay. 

The reporter took it good-naturedly enough, but 
it may have rankled the least bit, for by and by, 
when Verny was called to the telephone, he said: 
“The next time that young man tries to put over 
one of his big deals I’m going to give him a nice 
improving talk.” 

“Oh,” protested Miss Mittens, “please don’t 
spoil him for us! He’s such good fun as he is. 
Don’t you all think so?” 

We all confessed a weakness for Verny, though 
admitting that modified reform might be a good 
thing. O’Shay said: 

“He’s a good fellow, all right—too good to be 
working that bluff game. I’m going to save him.” 

Verny came back just then from telephoning. 
Miss Mittens said: 

“I suppose you’ve been talking to Reggie Keene. 
Something big in finance for to-morrow, of course; 
or is it to-morrow night at the Van Beekmans’?” 

Verny seemed a trifle flushed and I thought his 
chest had a tendency to prominence, but he only 
smiled blandly. 

“Oh no! You are quite wrong—quite wrong,” 
he protested, as he picked up his hand. “Just an 
old friend—not quite of the social set, you 
know.” 


178 


REFORMING VERNY 


“Latest news from Big Punch,” grunted O’Shay, 
to nobody in particular, as he played second hand 
low, while Miss Mittens, who was his partner, gig¬ 
gled. Verny did not notice the remark openly, but 
he played the wrong card. 

He was late coming home the next evening. 
Most of us had finished dinner and were in the 
parlor when he arrived. 

“Hey, old man,” called O’Shay, “we’re waiting 
on you, to begin the game! What have you been 
up to? Cornering the market again, I suppose, 
though I didn’t hear any extras called.” 

Mr. Disbrow smiled benignly on the company. 
“I judge you are all pretty comfortably off to¬ 
night,” he said, twirling his mustache—a trifle ner¬ 
vously, I thought. 

“Sure,” said O’Shay. “We’ve had our dinner, 
if that’s what you mean.” 

“Not entirely, Mr. O’Shay. I mean the news 
from the Big Punch—though possibly you haven’t 
heard it. The evening papers, like yours, O’Shay, 
don’t think it worth while in the press of war news 
to mention the striking of a mere gusher in Texas, 
important as the event may be to us shareholders. 
It gives me pleasure, therefore, to inform those 
who followed my advice and purchased stock in 
the Big Punch prospect that the Big Punch drill 
last evening struck a giant gusher—the largest in 
that region. Billy Barker telephoned me his first 
report last night. Stock to-day sold up to a hun¬ 
dred and ten. It will sell higher, of course, but I 

*79 




SINGLE REELS 


decided to let mine go. Quite a neat little killing 
—a hundred thousand or so. Fve about decided 
to take a permanent vacation on it.” 

O’Shay laid down the cards he’d been shuffling 
and there was a resolute look in his face. A few 
perfunctory exclamations came from some of the 
others, such as: “How wonderful!” “See what 
we’ve missed!” “Oh, take us along, Verny!” and 
the like. O’Shay said: 

“Verny, my son, sit down here. I’m going to 
talk to you like a father.” 

Verny dropped into his regular place at the card- 
table obediently—almost timidly. 

“I haven’t known you as long as the rest have,” 
O’Shay went on, “but you’re a good sport, all 
right, and I like you—everybody does. Don’t 
we?” turning to the rest of us. 

There was a prompt and generous assent. “Of 
course! of course! Oh, yes indeed we all just love 
him! He’s so kind-hearted!”—the last from Miss 
Mittens. 

“Sure— that’s the way we feel,” proceeded 
O’Shay, “but you’ve got one fault, and it’s easily 
remedied. You want to cut out this financial and 
society stuff. It’s harmless enough—you don’t 
borrow any money on it—but it’s vanity, and in 
time will lose you friends. You don’t fool any¬ 
body by exposing a bunch of dough to the gang 
here and playing it as a stock winning, or with 
that talk about Reggie Keene and the Van Beek- 
man girls. That was a good enough spiel while 

180 




REFORMING VERNY 


the folks fell for it, but they’re on now, and they’d 
like you better without it. Come now, we’re at 
the mourners’ bench. Confess that there isn’t any 
Reggie Keene or Van Beekman girls—not in your 
set.” 

I think all our hearts ached for Verny. Miss 
Pankers murmured: 

“Oh, Mr. O’Shay!” 

Verny himself did not immediately reply. He 
shifted a little in his chair and had a helpless, 
hunted look. Then he smiled rather feebly and 
seemed to enter into the spirit of the occasion. 

“Oh, all right,” he said. “I don’t mind con¬ 
fessing, now that you’re all on to it. That was 
just a little joke —jeu <Tesprit, as the French say— 
also camouflage, you know.” 

“Of course,” said O’Shay, benevolently. “And 
that wad of money, it was the same old roll, 
wasn’t it, right along? Money that you’d worked 
hard and honestly for and saved, a little at 
a time, and that never saw Wall Street—isn’t 
that so?” 

“That’s what it was,” acknowledged Verny. 
“There was two hundred dollars of it. A hundred 
in ones and a one-hundred-dollar bill, or some¬ 
times two fifties. Confession is certainly good 
for the soul, O’Shay; I’m feeling better every 
minute.” 

“Of course you are. And now this Big Punch 
business, with Billy Barker from Texas—this dol¬ 
lar a share last week and your giant gusher at a 

181 



SINGLE REELS 


hundred and ten to-day; sift that out of your soul 
and we’ll start fresh from to-night, pure in heart 
and white as the driven snow. Give us the last 
dregs of truth, Verny, and see how we’ll all love 
you.” 

Verny looked about on the assembled company 
as if for support. We had all drawn about the 
table of inquisition, our hearts full of sympathy 
and friendship. He smiled a little—a smile that 
gradually became bland and expansive. 

“Yes, indeed,” he said, “in this great moment 
let us make the confession full and complete. The 
same truth that compelled me to give up Reggie 
Keene and the Van Beekman girls prompts me to 
declare that there was indeed a Billy Barker who 
left our paint department last year for the Texas 
oilfields. Also, that he did come back last week 
with some dope about the Big Punch, which I 
passed along to you. Also, that I was a good deal 
worried later, for oil is slippery stuff and I was 
afraid you’d get in wrong. I did take a chance 
myself and put in the two hundred—all I had— 
margin on a thousand shares. I’ve been on the 
verge of heart-failure for a week over it. But 
Billy telephoned me last night that he guessed 
maybe they’d struck something, and to-day I did 
manage to get rid of the stuff without loss, as you 
see. 

He drew from his breast pocket an envelope and 
took out some papers which he spread on the table 
before us. We politely bent forward to look. It 

182 



REFORMING VERNY 


was a broker’s memorandum of sale, and pinned 
to it was a check. 

Talk about heart-failure! Our eyes fairly 
popped. The amount of it was just short of a 
hundred and ten thousand dollars. 


183 


AN ADVENTURE IN DECORATION 


\X 7 E live in the suburbs, and, going in daily 
” as I do, it is quite natural that I should do 
a good deal of the family shopping. I have no 
particular fondness for bundles, but I carry a 
good many, for Elizabeth likes to see the things 
the same evening and we both like to talk them 
over, so quite often it happens that I go home 
loaded almost to the danger line, being now rather 
stout, with a good deal of bilge, which is a safer 
model for boats than men. I remember one 
warm Saturday afternoon when I was on the 2:45 
with a selection of hardware, including a gas oven, 
some flower pots, and an ice-cream freezer, a 
friend across the aisle passed me over this silly 
limerick: 

Said the man with the rubicund face, 

“Some weight in these bundles I trace; 

An express, I confess, 

Would be well, and I guess 
That a dray would not be out of place.” 

But this is all by the way—mere decoration— 
the item I have in mind had no weight of conse¬ 
quence. It was- But I will get on with my 

story. 

Our spare-room bedspread was getting shabby. 
There was a white-goods sale at Johnamaker’s. I 

184 



I COULD SEE THAT SHE GASPED A LITTLE WHEN WE SPREAD 
IT UPON THE BED AND BACKED AWAY FOR INSPECTION 










































































































AN ADVENTURE IN DECORATION 


had brought home something, but it would never 
do—never in the world—riot with the rest of our 
things. It was too pale—too anaemic—it belonged 
in a hospital ward. Elizabeth said: 

“We need more color. Get something unusual, 
if you can, something you think Cousin Angela 
would like. She may visit us almost any time, 
you know.” 

It is proper to explain here that Cousin Angela 
is a spinster relative who has gone in professionally 
for home decoration. Her visits are pleasant 
enough, but likely to be disturbing and expensive. 
They generally mean pulling the old things about 
and adding some new ones. One cannot object, 
though. Her enthusiasm is so splendid—and 
masterful. I doubted my ability to please Cousin 
Angela, and I am not a purist in bedspreads. I 
have a habit, however, of obeying orders. 

The salesman at Johnamaker’s said he had just 
what I wanted—something unusual—with color 
in it—at a great bargain—the only one in stock. 
He pulled out a white-and-red scrimmy thing 
which he said was Honduras embroidery, and very 
striking. 

It was striking and had color, all right. The 
scrimmy stuff was a dead white and the embroidery 
was a blaze of red splashes, intermingled with 
roosters in red and green—also yellow—two assem¬ 
blies of them, one running down each side. Red 
always catches me—red and green, with a touch 
of yellow—the combination answers to something 

185 




SINGLE REELS 


inherited from my Indian ancestor. I had mis¬ 
givings when I thought of Elizabeth, but the 
price seemed cheap, and for the moment I did 
not remember Cousin Angela. Economy appeals 
to Elizabeth. She dearly loves a bargain, and this 
was a real one. My guess is that it had been on 
hand at Johnamaker’s for years, waiting for a 
person of my taste to come along. 

I told Elizabeth the price at which I had 
obtained “genuine Honduras hand-embroidery” 
before I opened it. Still, I could see that she 
gasped a little when we spread it upon the bed 
and backed away for inspection. 

“It certainly is unusual,” she said. “The white 
is so white, and the other things so—so positive.” 

I could see that, now, myself. There was not 
another thing in the room so white, or so red, or 
so yellow, or so green. Those roosters belonged 
in the heart of nature. 

“Perhaps age will tone it down,” I suggested. 
“Suppose we hang it on the line for a week 
or so. 

“That wouldn’t help the white. I think we 
might stand the other things—if the white was 
brought down to a kind of tan—even the roosters. 
Styles rather run to the grotesque, now. I think 
I’ll dip it in some dye I have.” 

I knew she would. Elizabeth has a passion for 
dipping things. Every little while she has a dye 
pot on the stove, at which times I lock up my 
clothes. 


186 



\ 


AN ADVENTURE IN DECORATION 

“Td hate to have Cousin Angela see it as it is,” 
she added. “Fm afraid she’d think us crazy.” 

I had a cold chill. I had forgotten Cousin 
Angela completely. 

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll return it at once.” 

But Elizabeth’s bent for dipping was aroused 
and going strong. It was Saturday afternoon, 
but she would begin at once. She said the pattern 
of that spread was growing on her, and that with 
the white mildly dyed it would be an effective 
thing. 

I had some work in the garage, and was attend¬ 
ing to it, when Elizabeth called me. As she 
greeted me I thought her face wore a hunted 
look. 

“See what I have done,” she said. 

She held up a section of the spread. The white 
was lower in tone, certainly, but it was not alto¬ 
gether a tan. It was, in fact, pinkish. The Hon¬ 
duras person had not used fast color for his red. 

“It runs, in warm water,” grieved Elizabeth. 
“I should have used cold, but it’s too late now. 
I’ve rinsed and rinsed and I can’t get it out. I’m 
afraid I’ve ruined it, unless I can make it brown 
enough to kill that pink.” 

“Do it,” I said, “and see what happens. It’s 
too late for half measures now.” 

I went back to the garage, and about every 
half hour was summoned to inspect results. Our 
spread, from a pinkish tan took on successive 
shades of brownish, browner, brown. At the last 

187 




SINGLE REELS 


stage the pink was scarcely discoverable. If the 
other colors had lost anything we could not detect 
it. The blazing roosters were still vigorous, though 
certainly less vivid against their new background, 
which was definitely brown—redskin brown, noth¬ 
ing less. When Elizabeth summoned me again 
she had the spread dried, ironed, and on the bed. 
Neither of us spoke for a minute; then she 
remarked: 

“It looks exactly like a painted Indian in the 
room—there’s not another thing that goes with 
it. It was too white before; now everything else 
is too white. What would Cousin Angela say?” 

I liked the thing ; the blood of my ancestors 
spoke in me. 

“We’ll make the other stuff fit it,” I said. 
“We’ve been talking of doing this room over. 
We’ll do it in colors to match. We’ll paper the 
walls, paint the bed and woodwork, and put in 
the new rug we’ve been wanting.” 

“It will probably kill Cousin Angela,” said 
Elizabeth. 

“Well, if it shortens her visit-” I began, 

but Elizabeth stopped me. 

“Cousin Angela is your own blood,” she said. 
“You ought to be ashamed.” 

Elizabeth went with me to select the paper; we 
took the Honduras spread along. Choosing was 
difficult. We went to several places without find¬ 
ing anything that would fall in with our color 
Scheme. When we did seem to be approaching it, 

188 



AN ADVENTURE IN DECORATION 


Elizabeth remembered Cousin Angela and faltered. 
Finally, in desperation we groped into a grimy 
little place on Third Avenue. Ah, he had color 
schemes all right. Vivid reds and yellows 
and greens were his specialty. But the patterns— 
no, even I could not stand those. We were going, 
when the proprietor fished out something from a 
dim corner. It was a roll of paper. He flung an 
end of it over his exhibition easel and nobody said 
anything. It was unnecessary. That paper spoke 
for itself. It was a prairie fire; it was the Grand 
Canon at sunset; it was autumn gone mad. There 
was no pattern. Some futurist, or post-impres¬ 
sionist, or cubist, or something had designed it 
just before he committed suicide. 

“Goodness!” Elizabeth said, when she got her 
breath. 

“It come in by mistake,” said the paperman, 
“and I put it over there to send back. There’s 
just about enough for your job. If you want 
plenty of color, there you’ve got it. Some colored 
people thought once of taking it, but changed their 
minds. They thought it a little strong. I’ll give 
you a big bargain in it.” 

Elizabeth laid a fold of the Honduras spread 
across the easel. The effect was startling. They 
were a perfect match—anybody could see that. 
Something told me that we were about to become 
the owners of that delirium of wall color. When 
he quoted the price I knew it. 

Third Avenue does not deliver to the suburbs. 

189 



SINGLE REELS 


When we left the dingy little shop I was carrying 
the bundle rejected by the colored builders. Wall¬ 
paper is solid stuff. 

Neither of us mentioned Cousin Angela. We 
had, so to speak, flung prudence to the winds. 
We were under the spell of the Honduras spread. 

“We better look for the rug now,” said Eliza¬ 
beth, rather grimly, I thought. 

I did not blame her. She had always liked 
pretty, light, delicate things; the surrender to the 
barbaric was no light matter for her. 

There were no rugs that went with our new 
ideas, but by and by, toiling up Fifth Avenue, 
Elizabeth caught sight of a Navajo blanket that 
riveted the attention of every one within three 
blocks. 

“That is the only thing that will at all do / 5 
she said, with decision. “We’ve started on the 
road to savagery; we might as well go the full 
length.” 

So we bought the Navajo, with its thunder-and- 
lightning pattern, and, the Indian place being also 
short on delivery, we carried that, too. Next day 
I got a man to hang the paper and paint the wood¬ 
work and bedstead down to shades that seemed to 
blend with our general violence. The paperman 
almost balked when he found what he had got to 
hang. He said he had never seen anything like 
it. He said he couldn’t seem to work out the 
pattern. When he had been an hour trying to 
match up the second strip I saw that he 

190 


was 


AN ADVENTURE IN DECORATION 


rapidly approaching lunacy, I told him not to 
mind the pattern, but just to go ahead regardless, 
which he did. When he got through and left he 
was gibbering, and I fear his mind was perma¬ 
nently affected. 

We brushed up, wiped up, and laid our Navajo 
floorpiece. Elizabeth made the bed and put on 
the Honduras cover. Then we sat down over in 
one corner, to take in the result. The Honduras 
spread was no longer conspicuous. It was, in 
fact, quite mild. We had conflagration in one 
corner, a night bombardment in another, and a 
war dance on the floor. We had also done some¬ 
thing in the way of high-art ticking to the chairs. 
I'm partial to strong tones, as I have said, but I 
confess I had misgivings. Elizabeth said: 

“It’s so unlike what I always expected it to be. 
Something quite sweet and cool for summer, you 
know.” 

“But it will be rich and warm for winter,” I 
said, trying to defend our achievement. “And 
after all, this color idea is imaginary. One can be 
just as hot in a room all blue and white as any¬ 
where.” 

“I suppose so,” assented Elizabeth, “but what 
—oh, what do you suppose Cousin Angela will 
say to it? And she is likely to come any time.” 

“I don’t care,” I began, but hesitated. I have 
a wholesome respect for Cousin Angela, who had 
more than once caused me to spend money in 
reconstruction. “Suppose,” I said, taking another 

191 


SINGLE REELS 


tack, “we lock this room, when Cousin Angela 
comes, and mislay the key. She can have my 
room and I’ll go in on the couch in the parlor.” 

“I think I could never stand having her see 
this,” said Elizabeth. “The suspense of waiting 
to hear her remarks—and then—oh, how could 
we ever have done such a thing, anyway!” 

“Why, I really think it’s—it’s not so bad,” I 
began, rather weakly. “It’s—it’s unusual and 
rich and ——” 

“It’s certainly unusual,” agreed Elizabeth, “and 
I might like it, too, if it were not for what people 
would say. I mean Cousin Angela. Her opinion 
of us is poor enough as it is. I can’t stand it to 
have her think we are a pair of-” 

There was a ring at the door-bell and Elizabeth 
went. I heard voices of greeting, and a minute 
later she came hurrying back, looking pretty wild. 

“It’s Cousin Angela!” she said. “Lock the 
room, quick, and lose the key! She’s in the parlor 
—I’ve come to call you.” 

But we couldn’t lock the door and lose the key, 
because the latter article was already lost. We 
made a busy search for it and tried keys from two 
other rooms, but with no success. Elizabeth said: 

“Oh, it 5 s no use! Let’s bring her in, and take 
our sentence. She’d have to know 7 sooner or later, 
anyway.” 

I went quaking to greet my blood relative—a 
large, positive person—and with a show of cor¬ 
diality seized her bag. 


192 






AN ADVENTURE IN DECORATION 


“Come right back to your room, Cousin 
Angela/’ I said, gayly. “We have a surprise for 
you. 

She came striding down the hall. I looked at 
Elizabeth. Her features were set. I could feel 
my heart doing queer things, and I was dragging 
my feet. 

Cousin Angela paused on the threshold. She 
looked around and about, above and below, and 
at the bed in the center. 

“When did you do all this?” she demanded, at 
last, and I thought I detected agitation in her 
usually strong voice—agitation that did not tend 
to improve my feelings. 

“Why,” I faltered, “not long ago—that is, 
quite recently. 

Cousin took another long look. “Who directed 
you? I mean, where did you get the idea, and 
that paper?” 

I looked at Elizabeth. She was quite helpless, 
so I managed to go on weakly: 

“We—we weren’t directed. I- That is, we 

de—developed it, and we happened to—to find 
the paper. Of course, you—you may not like it, 

but it—it was an idea. You see- That is, of 

course, it grew—and—and—we-” 

Cousin Angela cut in on my inanities. “Not 
like it! Not like it! I adore it! I think it the 
most wonderful thing I ever saw in my life. That 
spread! that paper! that color tone—the return 
to the primitive—it’s what I’ve been trying to get 

193 









SINGLE REELS 


for months! I have a room to do for the De 
Puyster van Tassels, and with your permission I 
shall make it an exact copy of this one. You must 
tell me everything—where you got the spread, 
the wall paper, and the art ticking, the man who 
did the painting, and I want that exact Navajo 
to go with it. Tell me the whole story, right 
away.” 

I looked at Elizabeth. She had edged over 
near me and was leaning quite weakly on my arm. 

“Oh, Cousin Angela,” she said, sweetly, “we 
are so glad to have your favorable opinion! We 
had to hunt ever so hard to find just the right 
things, and we did so wonder what you would 
think of it! It’s such a comfort to know that it 
all pleases you!” 


194 


NORTHWEST BY NORTH 

J AM of a roving nature and sometimes find 
myself in queer places. When we declared 
war on Germany I had just arrived in Anguilla 
and wanted to get away. You have never heard 
of Anguilla, so I will explain that it is the farthest 
north of the Leeward Islands and is about the 
only uninviting spot in the West Indies. When I 
add that it is practically without shade, that its 
population is intensively colored, and that its main 
crop is sweet potatoes and goats, you will begin to 
get the idea. By the time I discovered these 
things the steamer that brought me had hurried 
on to St. Thomas and nobody expected another 
for years. 

The landlord of the hotel, where, so far as I 
could discover, I was the only guest, told me that 
there was a schooner down at the dock that might 
be going somewhere when they got her fixed up, 
and a trading sloop that had come in from the 
States a day or two before. I hurried down 
there, 

“Oh, the barren, barren shore!” The schooner 
was a drunken old thing that they thought they 
might get pumped out and patched up enough in 
about six months to get over to Charleston, and 
the sloop was a frowsy-looking hussy named the 

195 


SINGLE REELS 

j 

Molly G., modeled after a bath-tub and similar 
in size. 

There was a stringy-haired young fellow with a 
retreating chin on the Molly G. and I interviewed 
him. He didn’t look like a sailor. He had on a 
fifty-cent plaid golf cap and a seven-dollar bicycle 
suit. I judged he was a passenger, and expected 
to be starting presently. That was a fair guess, 
but it didn’t cover all the ground. I asked who 
was in charge of the boat. 

“I am,” he said, “now.” 

I wondered what he meant by “now,” but I 
didn’t ask. 

“When does she sail,” I said, “and where to?” 

“Well, we want to get to Philadelphia, and 
we’re just about to start.” 

I observed that he did not say they were going 
to Philadelphia, but only that they wanted to get 
there. The difference was slight, but noticeable. 

“How about passengers? Got any room?” 

“Oh yes, room enough—more room than any¬ 
thing.” 

“Well,” I said, “I want to get to Philadelphia, 
too. Do I arrange with you, or the captain?” 

“I’m the captain.” 

I probably showed surprise, for he went on 
to explain. 

“I guess I don’t look it,” he said, “and I 
never was a captain before, nor a sailor, neither, 
until this trip. I came down a passenger, for 
my health. The doctor thought a slow-sailin’ 

196 


mutiny! mutiny!” he shrieked, “northwest by north, and lighten the ship! 


















NORTHWEST BY NORTH 


vessel would be good for me, and I guess it has 
been. I stayed most of the time on deck, helpin' 
with the ropes. The captain let me steer, too, 
and explained how he worked out his navigation. 
Then when he got here and heard about the war 
he had to get back right away, as he was in the 
reserve, or something, so he appointed me captain 
and took the steamer for New York. He said 
just to hold the Molly northwest by north and 
pick good sailin' weather, and she’d get us some¬ 
where, all right." 

“Well," I said, “there's something in what he 
says; but how about your crew? You've got two 
or three good sailors, I suppose." 

“Two. We had three, but one went back with 
the captain. The two that’s left are all right, 
though. One of ’em has been to sea before, and 
the other was cook on a tugboat before he came 
this trip. They’ll be here pretty soon to load 
them barrels of potatoes. Then we’re goin' to 
start. Think you’ll come along?" 

At first I didn't think so. I thought it better 
to spend the rest of my life even in blazing Anguilla 
than to fling it away in that careless fashion. I 
had to admire that young idiot’s nerve, though. 
Why, he spoke of starting with an outfit like that 
on a fifteen-hundred-mile Atlantic voyage as if it 
were an afternoon’s sail across the Delaware! 

“Look here," I said. “What makes you think 
you’ll ever get to Philadelphia?" 

“Well, of course," he admitted, “we may not 

197 


SINGLE REELS 

hit it exactly, but if we steer northwest by north, 
and keep going, we’ll bring up over that way 
somewhere, won’t we? and then we can inquire, 
and followthe shore up or down, as the case maybe. 
I’m a pretty good hand at findin’ places, and at 
steerin’, too. My business on land is in that line.” 

“What is your business on land?” 

“I’m a chauffeur. I drive for Miss Susan 
Meacham, of Marcus Hook. It’s a Ford, but 
the principle is the same. Miss Meacham will be 
expectin’ me back soon. That’s why I’m anxious 
to get off.” 

My impulse was to cable Miss Meacham to 
look out for another chauffeur, but I let it pass. 

“I see,” I said. “And you think by picking 
a nice day like this to start, and steering north¬ 
west by north for a week or two, we’ll come 
to some place where we can inquire the way to 
Philadelphia.” 

“Why, yes. Don’t you think so?” 

“Well,” I admitted, “the principle is sound, 
but there might be such a thing as a storm, you 
know, and if we weren’t sunk we might be blown a 
thousand miles or so off our course, and without 
being able to tell where we were we might fetch 
up at the north pole.” 

“Oh, but the weather is awful nice at this 
season. We didn’t have any trouble cornin’ 
down; and, besides, I can take latitude and 
longitude. The captain explained it to me and 
gave me a little book.” 


198 


NORTHWEST BY NORTH 


“Ah, I see.” I might have added that I had 
seen some nasty April storms down that way, but 
it didn ! 't seem worth while. 

“Do you think you want to come? I won’t 
charge you anything if you’ll give us a hand with 
the ropes sometimes and help with the steerin’. 
You could steer, I guess; it’s real easy.” 

What a lamb he was! “A fool for luck,” I 
thought. My faith grew. 

“Yes,” I said, “I could help steer. I owned a 
cat-boat one summer in the Shrewsbury River. 
As a sailor I judge I belong about in a class with 
the rest of you. I’ll join your asylum. When 
do you leave?” 

“The boys are cornin’ now. We only have to 
load these barrels and have some papers signed. 
We’ll be ready inside of an hour, and we ought 
to be goin’. It’s such a nice day.” 

The “boys” came and I took a look at them. 
One was a red-headed Irishman, with one eye and 
a limp. The other was a snubnosed, undersized 
nondescript, in rubber boots several sizes too big 
for him. We were introduced. He of the red 
hair was Hennessey. The other was simply 
“Beans.” Then the chauffeur captain mentioned 
that his own name was Sample—Simon Sample, 
which inspired fresh confidence. My baggage 
was light. I had it aboard presently, and within 
the hour we were steering northwest by north, 
leaving the last point of solid land behind. Hen¬ 
nessey was at the wheel. “Beans” was in the 

199 



SINGLE REELS 


galley forward, cooking them. Captain Sample, 
“on watch,” stood at the bow, his legs well apart, 
scanning with a two-dollar opera-glass the horizon 
in the direction of Philadelphia. 

There was a steady breeze from the south and 
the Molly G. was walking away from it. During 
recurring moments of misgiving I wondered why 
I was not still ashore. Recalling the old adage, I 
was reassured—doubly, quadruply so; as a plain 
idiot Captain Sample had nothing on the rest of 
us. “Beans” came up by and by with the dinner 
and we had it on deck, taking turns at holding 
the Molly G. northwest by north. I have eaten 
better meals, but none more filling. The pudding 
was particularly interesting. It was made of a 
curious purple substance which defied analysis. 
We had it again for supper. Also, once more, the 
particular nourishment which gave “Beans” his 
title. Then it began to get dark and it was my 
turn to take the little prize-package glass and look 
toward Philadelphia. Again I was beset by doubts. 
It seemed a good deal of murky water to be at 
large on with such an equipment. Only the 
thought of our personnel gave me hope. 

But perhaps all of us were not entire fools. I 
suspected that Hennessey was not. There was a 
premonition of it in a remark he made when I 
relieved him at the wheel. 

“It’s foive to wan that we’ll never get the 
half way over,” he said, “but I rayched the con- 
cloosion that it’s better to be dead to wanst 


200 


NORTHWEST BY NORTH 

than to live with thim naygurs in that bailin’ 
Anguiller.” 

“’Sh! Hennessy,” I said. “ Intelligence like that 
can sink us.” 

It was certainly fine sailing. We stood the 
watches two and two—Hennessey and “Beans,” 
then Capt. Simon Sample and myself. One or 
two days of it would have been well enough. It 
was well enough, anyway, except for the general 
uncertainty of things and the indeterminate pud¬ 
ding. Every day Captain Sample took observa¬ 
tions with an old quadrant and a tin clock and 
arrived at something which he said was latitude 
and longitude, though he always seemed a good 
deal confused as to which was which, and decided 
after he had consulted a greasy map which he 
called a chart. Then he solemnly tacked up a 
paper on the mast with the result. If the tin 
clock could have overcome its habit of jumping 
half an hour every little while and of stopping 
betweentimes, the figures might have been more 
convincing. Still, I don’t know; they were on a 
par with the rest of our outfit, and I think they 
impressed Hennessey. When we had been going 
along without a break for four days our com¬ 
mander informed us that we were over halfway 
to Philadelphia and “makin’ a bee-line for Cape 
May.” He had once driven Miss Meacham to 
Cape May, he said, and that if we went in close 
he would show where he had stopped, and we 
could wave as we went by. It was still just an 

201 





SINGLE REELS 

afternoon sail to him. He didn’t know the 
ocean’s power. 

He learned it next morning. The sun came up 
red and drunken, the west suddenly turned black, 
the water took on a spectral look. Then it 
began to lighten and thunder, with the black all 
overhead now, boiling and writhing in the most 
dangerous-looking way. Hennessey and I got 
the sail down, and just then the wind turned 
loose with a bang that lifted us out of the ocean. 
In another minute the Molly G. was going through 
the waves like a stampeded steer, with Hennessey 
and “Beans” clinging to the wheel and Comman¬ 
der Sample and myself holding for dear life to the 
sail that was slapping in every direction wdiile we 
tried to tie it fast. Then the thunder seemed to 
tear a hole in the sky. The solid rain poured 
through, the waves began to wash us fore and aft, 
and I could see where Hennessey was going to 
win his “foive to wan” bet if matters did not 
improve pretty suddenly. Perhaps they did 
improve a little, for we seemed to keep going, 
though there were moments when I could not 
decide whether we were on top of the sea or 
already under it. Simon Sample and I somehow 
managed to get a few ties on the big sail, but 
presently, when I happened to get a look at our 
commander, I noticed a glare in his eyes which 
suggested that he was laboring under strong 
excitement. 

“We must lighten ship!” he yelled. “We 

202 


NORTHWEST BY NORTH 

must fling over the cargo to keep from going 
down!” 

We were on our hands and knees, clinging to the 
boom. He had seized my foot and was trying to 
drag me toward the toy hatchway. Hennessey at 
the wheel yelled: 

“Lave off that! Thim pertaties is all that’s 
kapin’ us from capsizin’! Ye’ll be overboard in a 
minit yerself!” 

He motioned me to the wheel with “Beans,” 
and, making a grab at Commander Sample, steered 
him forcibly to the cabin, pushed him inside, shut 
the door and locked it. 

“He’s gone fair crazy!” he shouted. “I knew 
the first shtorm would do it to that grasshopper 
head of his. Shtand to, now, fer that big wan!” 

I don’t think we were steering northwest by 
north at the moment. We were going with the 
wind and keeping the Molly G. up out of the 
chasms as well as we could. It was not altogether 
a matter of direction. Suddenly the cabin window 
flew up and Captain Sample’s head shot out. 

“Mutiny! mutiny!” he shrieked. “Northwest 
by north, and lighten the ship!” 

A paper box of crackers weighing about four 
ounces came sailing past us followed by a mouse¬ 
trap. They were caught by the wind and carried 
into the foam. There was a heavy lurch and he 
disappeared—the window banged down. Hen¬ 
nessey grinned. Five minutes later the window 
went up again. 


203 


SINGLE REELS 




“Hi, there!” cried our wild-eyed commander, 
“We’re all right! I’ve saved us! I’ve just taken 
the reckoning, and we’re a hundred and forty 
miles inland! Hurray! Hurray for the Molly G.! ” 

Another heavy lurch, another disappearance 
with a bang. 

“This bates Anguiller—sink or swim!” shouted 
Hennessey. 

That was positively Capt. Simon Sample’s last 
appearance. The cabin showed no further sign. 
We thought he might have passed away, but there 
was no time to investigate. The wind now had 
got down to a steady gale. Our jib still held, and 
whatever else we were doing, we were making 
time. Also we had worked the Molly G. back on 
her course. Sometime in the afternoon I got the 
cabin key from Hennessey and went down to 
investigate. Our lightsome commander lay on 
the floor, groaning dismally. The malady of the 
sea bore heavily upon him. But he had got rid 
of his madness, also his fear, also of much else— 
oh, very much; his condition defied analysis. 

For two days that was a busy ship. With a 
sixty-mile gale behind us and our rag of a jib 
flying we made a record for the Molly G. “ Beans ” 
dug up what he could from the galley in the way 
of sustenance—cold potatoes, purple pudding, 
hunks of biscuit. Captain Sample was not visible. 
He had managed to make his bunk, and remained 
there. We somehow worried along without the 
reckoning. 


204 




NORTHWEST BY NORTH 


But on the third night the wind went down. 
By morning the sea was learning to behave, the 
sun came up bright. Hennessey was steering and 
“Beans” and I hoisting the mainsail when the 
cabin door opened and Capt. Simon Sample, care¬ 
fully dressed in his seven-dollar suit and plaid cap, 
stepped on deck, carrying his dinky opera-glass. 
He bade us good morning as cheerfully as if 
nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Then 
he swept the horizon in the direction of Philadel¬ 
phia. A moment later he turned gleefully. 

“Land!” he called. “Right over there, just as 
I expected. I’ll bet two dollars it’s Cape May!” 

Land it certainly was. We could all see it now, 
even without the glass. By and by we could see 
the houses. Captain Sample scrutinized them with 
his glass. 

Summer cottages,” he said; “most of’em unoc¬ 
cupied yet, but I guess we’ll find somebody to ask.” 

We ran close inland. He noticed what appeared 
to be a fisherman’s cottage in a small inlet. A 
landing-dock ran out into the water and there 
were some boats tied. 

“Those people are at home, all right,” he said. 
“Pull in there, Hennessey, and I’ll inquire.” 

Hennessey rounded to the dock. Simon Sample 
stepped out and ran up to the house. Presently 
a woman came out and they talked and pointed. 
Captain Sample came running back. 

“We’re all right,” he said. “Straight ahead 
and first turn to the right. That will bring us 

205 




SINGLE REELS 

right around Cape May. I'm first rate at findin’ 
places/’ 

He might have been out with Miss Meacham in 
the Ford. “Beans” brought up some hot coffee 
and fried salt pork. Capt. Simon Sample was in 
high feather. 

“I tell you there’s nothin’ like understandin’ 
navigation,” he said. “If Miss Meacham will let 
me off, I think I’ll take it up altogether. How 
about the navy, eh ? I’ll bet when the government 
hears about this trip they’ll offer me command of 
a cruiser, or somethin’. Run in close, Hennessey, 
an’ I’ll show you boys where I stayed last summer.” 

The red-headed Irishman and I grinned at each 
other. 

“We need not have been the least alarmed, 
Hennessey,” I said. “With a man of Captain 
Sample’s caliber aboard we’ve been in perfectly 
safe hands all the time.” 


206 


THE GREAT ROUNDTOP VEGETABLE 

DRIVE 


'T'HIS happened during the fever of the late 
A war. I didn’t suppose there ever would come 
a time when one could speak of it as the “late 
war” but, lo! it is here! That war was geared to 
run forever, some thought. That was the general 
opinion—at least, in Roundtop. 

But I am not getting started well. The thing 
on my mind is gardens—war gardens—war gar¬ 
dens in Roundtop. Everybody was going to have 
one. Every family in town, early in the spring, 
commenced laying out the whole of their back 
yards, turning the sod under, and their flower 
beds. Some laid out their front yards as well, and 
a good many of them put up signs which said that 
vegetables would win the war, and that every row 
of corn was a front-line trench, and that every 
tomato was a bomb for liberty, and a lot more such 
stirring sentiments. 

I have said every family in town, but there was 
one exception—it was in our neighborhood. We 
caught the notion, too, at first—Elizabeth rather 
alarmingly; I not so hard. I had gardened a 
good deal, as a boy. I had often done it on a 
Saturday when I knew that a baseball game was 
going on down back of the Campbellite church, 

207 


SINGLE REELS 


and that some one-gallused, unattached boy was 
taking my place as shortstop. The weather at 
such times was hot—entirely too hot for hoeing 
weeds and hilling up corn—and as I bent over the 
row , with the sweat getting into my eyes and 
trickling down my nose, and thought of those 
other fellows tearing around to make third base 
and sliding in or the home plate, I had acquired 
a permanent distaste for a hoe and related 
implements. 

Moreover, our back yard at Roundtop was 
peculiar. It was a particularly open space at the 
south end of the house, which was a dazzling 
white as to color. On a mid-July day we had no 
real need of a gas range. Elizabeth declared that 
a steak set out on the back stoop would have to 
be watched to keep it from getting overdone. When 
I contemplated that bit of soil, even on a mellow 
afternoon in April, and reflected what it would 
be on, say, Independence Day when a patriot 
would naturally be engaged there, I had a return 
of what, on those old Saturday afternoons, I 
used to describe to my mother as a “kind of 
dizzy spell,” which sometimes got me excused for 
the rest of the day. Corn would thrive in the 
fierce glow of that little sun-smitten square, no 
doubt—also other things—but something told me 
that one of my temperament would wilt under it. 
I was wilting already. I went around to the shady 
front stoop to consider. 

Tom McNaughten came along. McNaughten 

208 




SOME RUMOR HAD COME TO HIM OF MY DECLINING HEALTH AND HE 

HAD COME TO SEE ABOUT IT 







ROUNDTOP VEGETABLE DRIVE 


was very strong for war gardens. He had not 
only a back yard, but a vacant lot which he was 
getting into shape to put into potatoes. He 
stopped, of course. 

“Well,” he said, “I suppose you are going to be 
digging up that little old farm of yours pretty 
soon, now. I was looking at it yesterday. Great 
place for beans and corn and things that want lots 
of sun. Better than anything I’ve got. I tell you 
we’re up against it. We old boys will have to hoe 
to hustle the Hun, eh? You’ll be on the job, of 
course.” 

I sighed, and allowed my hand to steal uncon¬ 
sciously in the direction of my heart. 

“I hope so,” I said, feebly. “I’ve been planning 
for it, but I’ve not been as well as I would like 
this spring, and I may not be able to undertake 
it. The sun seems to affect my circulation or 
something. Just now I was out there and, pleasant 
as the day is, I had a sensation that made me want 
to sit here in the shade. I had something of that 
sort as a child. It’s too bad—it will be such a 
disappointment—especially to Elizabeth, who has 
been counting on saving a good deal in green stuff 
to help out with her Assyrian fund.” 

McNaughten was sympathetic—he is the best 
soul in the world. He said that, after all, my 
ground was really too small to make any material 
difference, and that if I was affected by the sun 
in that way it was not worth while to take a 
dangerous risk for a few vegetables. He would 

209 



SINGLE REELS 


send me some of his. I felt traceably guilty until 
Carruthers and Blake and Walker and some seven 
or eight others had come along and talked war 
garden to me, and I had told the same story to 
each of them. I believed it myself, by that time, 
and most of the guilt had worn ofF. It seemed to 
me that I really did feel a little dizzy at moments, 
and that my heart was not behaving as well as it 
should. We had good neighbors—the best ever— 
and they all, to a man, sympathized and promised 
to send vegetables. I could see that it was going 
to give them a real pleasure to bring us things 
from their gardens, and I was willing to gratify 
them in that simple way. 

It was not so easy to convince Elizabeth. 
When I referred to my condition she said she 
hadn't noticed anything different about me lately, 
except that my appetite was rather better than 
usual, but that of course if the sun was going to 
prostrate me she could probably attend to the 
hoeing herself, along with her housekeeping, her 
Red Cross work, her Assyrian fund, and a few 
other things. I had to argue pretty strenuously 
that there was going to be more stuff in our 
neighbors' gardens, anyway, than they could pos¬ 
sibly use, and that it would be wrong to take her 
time from those more important duties. Perhaps 
I ought to add that in a former day we had kept 
a domestic assistant, but had parted with her one 
morning when she had been offered as much per 
week to conduct a trolley car as we had been able 

210 


9 


ROUNDTOP VEGETABLE DRIVE 

to pay her per month to administer our quiet 
household. Since then Elizabeth had added cer¬ 
tain home activities to her war work—not with 
entire success, I may say, though I did not often 
mention this, being patriotic, and Elizabeth some¬ 
what forceful. She expressed doubts, now, in her 
customary positive way, as to the promised vege¬ 
table supply, but for once she was mistaken. Oh, 
entirely so—as you shall see! 

You will remember that last summer was what 
farmers call a “growing” season—at least, for 
most things. War gardens flourished. Men like 
Tom McNaughten, who had never known the 
joys of gardening in early life and could hardly 
tell green beans from turnips until they were on 
the table, pretty soon went swelling around with 
bunches of radishes and heads of lettuce, talking 
about Hale’s Early and Boston Curly and a lot 
of other varieties, in a way that would make you 
think they were canvassing for a seed house. You 
never saw such a vain, set-up lot. They worked 
on those gardens nights and holidays and Sundays 
and really pretended to enjoy it. Their cars stood 
in the garage. The golf course was deserted. 
They hailed the new daylight-saving idea as a boon. 

Then they bqgan to bring us things. They 
wanted to show off, of course, but they were good 
souls, too, and trusting. Word had gone around 
that I was not what you would call well; that I 
had dizzy spells—was almost an invalid, also 
greatly depressed because my doctor would not 

211 


SINGLE REELS 


permit me to make a war garden. Some said I 
was going into a decline. 

We got the earliest and choicest things. 
McNaughten and Carruthers and Bliss and Blake 
and a lot more brought us dripping, dewy radishes 
and tender young lettuce before they had enough 
for themselves, and always the best selections. 
We begged them not to rob themselves in that 
way, which only seemed to stimulate them to 
further extravagance. 

You never saw anything like it. It became a 
regular competition. In the morning before we 
were up those war gardeners would come, and on 
our opening the front door we would find a heap 
of bunches and bundles with their cards attached. 
They generally had something written on them— 
something spirited and patriotic. On a bunch of 
onions, for instance, “How will these British 
Beauties do to keep the Hun traveling?” Or on 
a basket of lettuce, “Just a sample of Canadian 
Crimpy to put a crimp in the Kaiser.” Then there 
were names like “Belgian Yellow” and “Japanese 
Prolific” and “American Wonder” and Cham¬ 
pion of Italy” for the various beans and peas and 
cucumbers that they unloaded at our threshold. 
All the Allies were represented there, and recom¬ 
mended to do things to the enemy’s front-line 
trench. 

They did something to our front-line trench. 
They filled it up full. We could not begin to eat 
all that produce. We thought there would be a 

212 


ROUNDTOP VEGETABLE DRIVE 


falling off presently, but that was poor judgment. 
As the season advanced the supply increased, 
doubled, and trebled. After the first offerings 
of radishes and lettuce and onions and such early 
things came beans and tomatoes and Swiss chard. 

The Swiss are a good people—I admire them 
exceedingly—but they should not have invented 
chard. And just why our neighbors all went into 
it so frantically I fail to see. Now and then there 
would be a shortage of other things, but there 
was always a redundance of Swiss chard. I have 
heard that it is healthy; perhaps they thought it 
would be good for my mysterious ailment. No 
doubt they meant well, and I am still grateful for 
their attention, but in time I reached a point 
where I could not even look upon Swiss chard and 
feel entirely well. My biting into a boiled grass¬ 
hopper cunningly concealed between two leaves 
of it may have had something to do with this— 
Elizabeth, I fear, being not always sufficiently 
deliberate in preparing our food. I have heard 
that there are Indians who eat grasshoppers and 
like them. I think it improbable. 

I tried to adjust matters somewhat. I got up 
early, and when a friend came with chard I sought 
to persuade him to give it to some one down the 
street and leave me something else—say canta¬ 
loupes. I tried to find somebody who did not raise 
chard, so I could trade him our accumulation of 
it for early apples, or raspberries. But that was 
a failure. I succeeded in swapping a peck of toma- 

213 




SINGLE REELS 


toes to Walker for a dozen Golden Bantam corn, 
but when I mentioned a possible deal in Swiss 
chard he changed the subject. 

Still, it did not really matter. By the middle 
of July there wasn’t a thing we needed to trade 
for. We had everything. Our kitchen looked 
like a green-grocer’s shop, and every morning 
found a fresh pile on the front stoop. We <*ven 
tried to stem the flood, politely, of course. We 
put out a neat card with such hints as “ Plenty of 
corn to-day, thanks,” or “Chard enough for a 
while,” “No more summer squashes till further 
notice,” and the like. But it was no use. They 
thought it mere delicacy on our part, and heaped 
the pile higher. We finally set out a box for con¬ 
tributions. The heap was too conspicuous. 

One day my uncle Lemuel called. Uncle 
Lemuel has a farm a few miles out, and does 
a good deal in the way of market gardening. 
Some rumor had come to him of my declining 
health, and he had called to see about it. He 
had also brought a few choice things from his 
garden. 

I took Uncle Lemuel aside and carefully 
explained matters. He seemed interested—even 
amused. I led him to the kitchen and showed 
him what had happened. He said, “Gewhillikins! 
—don’t it beat all ? ” Then he thoughtfully looked 
over our stock and appraised it. 

“That’s all good truck,” he said. “I can sell 
every mite of it.” 


214 



ROUNDTOP VEGETABLE DRIVE 

“For goodness’ sake, do it!” I said. “Take it 
away—all of it. We’ve nearly killed ourselves 
trying to eat it up.” 

“Does it come reg’lar?” asked Uncle Lemuel. 

“It does. In a day or two we’ll have as much 
more. You can make a drive on it.” 

“I’ll drive in every second day and clean you 
out,” said Uncle Lemuel. 

“But that wouldn’t be right,” objected Eliza¬ 
beth, who arrived at the moment. 

“’Tain 5 t right to let it spile ” said Uncle Lemuel. 

I had a bright thought—the first one in some 
time. 

“Elizabeth,” I said, “you can put the proceeds 
into your Assyrian fund.” 

That is Elizabeth’s pet fund. Getting money 
for the Red Cross is easy enough. But Assyria is 
a good way off. Most of us think of the Assyrians 
as a people who once, in a bygone age, “came 
down like a wolf on the fold ” in purple and 
golden raiment. Contributors to the fund were 
scarce and economical. Elizabeth wavered, and 
fell. Uncle Lemuel carried the stuff out the back 
way, and some hours later reported with seven 
dollars. He had even disposed of our half a ton of 
Swiss chard. 

Uncle Lemuel came again Saturday, and again 
Tuesday. It was the height of the season, now, 
and the supply was growing steadily. I had to put 
out a bigger box, and I began to attach a card of 
fulsome appreciation. That opened up things in 

215 


SINGLE REELS 


earnest. When I wrote on it, “Great corn, Me.,” 
or, “Prize cucumbers, Fred,” and added, “Food 
for the gods,” or some pleasant thing like that, 
the others fairly laid themselves out to go one or 
two better in size and quality. Cantaloupes and 
carrots, potatoes and tomatoes, beans world with¬ 
out end—our front stoop in the morning looked 
like a prize display at a country fair. Uncle 
Lemuel came “reg’lar,” and said that, with his 
own truck and ours, he guessed he’d have to get 
a bigger wagon. Elizabeth’s Assyrian fund was 
piling up, and if her conscience pricked her now 
and then, the thought that she was suffering in a 
good cause consoled her. Also the size of the 
accumulation. 

Now and then, when I saw McNaughten and 
Bliss and Blake and the others, I told them how 
much the open-air exercise agreed with them. 
Sometimes I dropped around where they were 
digging away and offered a few encouraging words. 
At such times I spoke of the wonderful quality of 
their produce which I declared was certainly going 
far toward restoring my own health. They could 
see for themselves that I was getting fat. Any¬ 
body would get fat on a fancy vegetable diet like 
that. Next year, I said, I might be equal to a 
garden of my own. They were proud and patron¬ 
izing, and said they would furnish me with seeds 
and advice, and that if I broke down under the 
strain of keeping up with my garden they would 
come over and hoe it for me. They were certainly 

216 


ROUNDTOP VEGETABLE DRIVE 

good fellows. I did not tell them—not yet—that 
I had already almost broken down under the 
strain of trying to keep up with theirs. 

Through August and September the run con¬ 
tinued. Then the fall things came—big pumpkins 
rolled in, prize cabbages and turnips. Uncle 
Lemuel, good soul, did a land-office business for 
Elizabeth’s Assyrian fund—sometimes, I fear, at 
the expense of his own. But then came November, 
and the garden season waned. A day arrived 
when the daily supply was within our capabilities. 
Elizabeth said: 

‘‘Now we’ve got to tell those people.” 

That was difficult—delicate, I mean. One 
couldn’t think of just the best way. 

Fate provided it. Just at that critical time the 
war ended. The war gardens had won out. Per¬ 
haps a few other things had contributed, but we 
knew that McNaughten and Blake and Bliss and 
Carruthers would be strong on the garden feature. 
Elizabeth said that now she would get in some 
emergency help and have them and their wives to 
dinner. We did that, and when all were assembled 
at the table and had refreshed themselves with a 
round of—of grapejuice—and were about to launch 
into general garden and war talk, Elizabeth 
announced, quite gravely, that before we went 
any further she wished to return heartfelt grat¬ 
itude for their combined contribution to her 
Assyrian fund. That produced an immediate and 
profound silence. You can readily see that it 

217 




SINGLE REELS 


would be so. They looked at Elizabeth, and they 
looked at me, searchingly. 

So then it was my turn, and I confessed, quite 
fully. Never mind the details, but I closed by 
producing Uncle Lemuel’s somewhat picturesque, 
but accurate, account of sales, and displayed the 
same with its footings “fer the hull season”—a 
sum total of two hundred and eleven dollars and 
sixteen cents. 

Whereupon our guests rose as one and denounced 
me. They declared that I had quite fully estab¬ 
lished myself as a person unreliable as to statement, 
unscrupulous as to performance, and wholly with¬ 
out shame. Nevertheless, in the end they forgave 
me, for they are good neighbors—the very best, as 
I have stated. 

Something tells me, however, that the next time 
there is a hurry call for gardeners I shall be among 
those present. 


218 


RESERVED SEATS 


TXTHEN we agreed on a period of city residence 
* * I said that what we needed was a quiet fur¬ 
nished apartment, centrally located, with large 
rooms and not too expensive—a floor in an old- 
fashioned house preferred. I wanted to be near 
where things were going on, and a good deal of 
uninterruption and plenty of space were desirable 
things. I may repeat that the matter of price was 
rather important. Elizabeth remarked in her cas¬ 
ual way that from the specifications heaven was 
probably our home, as it seemed unlikely that we 
should find those things elsewhere. 

She was mistaken, however. Through a line 
discovered by careful search in the Sunday Times 
I found the very thing. The “Attractive furnished 
apartment to sublet cheap” proved to be on lower 
Fifth Avenue, in an old brownstone front. Once 
a mansion, it was now “Floors to let.” Ours was 
the third one, with big rooms just far enough above 
the street to make the murmur of rubber tires and 
asphalt rather soothing, and the occasional honk, 
honk a pleasant variation. A man who had 
leased it for a term of years, at the old rate, had 
business elsewhere, he said, now that the war was 
over, and was willing to sublet without increase of 
price. Then he called attention to the fact that 

219 



SINGLE REELS 


the three large front windows commanded a fine 
view of the street, and that on Fifth Avenue one 
got everything that was going. He said it was a 
wonderful place to see the parades. If there was 
anything to give one pause in the tempo of that 
observation, I did not notice it. I remembered 
it afterward merely as a pleasant remark, and so 
did Elizabeth. It was Elizabeth, in fact, who 
added that it would be nice to invite in friends 
for such occasions, to which he made no response 
—very likely a rather selfish person, as we thought, 
who had not cared to share his windows. It was 
generous in him to be willing to let the place go 
at the price, though. Elizabeth admitted that it 
was a find, and that I had been wonderfully smart 
to locate it. Then we moved in. 

I have never known anything more satisfactory 
than it all was when we were really settled. The 
open fire in the big front room, the solid and com¬ 
fortable old furnishings, with our own personal 
belongings, the quiet rumble of the passing show, 
always so interesting day or night, to look out 
upon. 

That was just when our victorious armies were 
coming back from France, to pass before the 
throng in bannered review. When we read that 
the gallant Steenty-eight had landed and were 
going to parade from Washington Square to the 
frontiers of Harlem, with martial bands and all 
the trappings of war, we were deeply stirred by 
the prospect. No more standing on a cold curb 

220 


WE GOT UP FAIRLY EARLY AND MADE THE SANDWICHES 



f 


















RESERVED SEATS 


for hours, mashed and trodden by the medleyed 
throng; no more ruinous prices for windy seats 
in some rickety grand stand. We would merely 
draw up nice, comfortable chairs to our spacious 
windows, and from the comfort of their deep 
luxury see everything, as it were, from our own 
fireside. We would invite in a few less privileged 
friends to share our monopoly. We wanted to be 
generous. Also, we wanted them to see how for¬ 
tunate we were. We knew some fellows in that 
regiment—we would ask their relatives. Elizabeth 
said it would be proper to serve a few refreshments. 
It was all going to be lovely, she said. 

It was; there wasn’t a single hitch in the 
program. Our maid wanted the day off, so we 
got up fairly early, made the sandwiches and 
things ourselves, and I went down to a near-by 
hostelry and acquired a bottle or two of certain 
liquids that have become noticeably more expen¬ 
sive since the “July 1st” order appeared on the 
horizon. Then we carried in the dining-room table 
and arranged everything on it, where it would be 
handy for our guests to help themselves at will. 
There was a free-and-easy atmosphere about the 
arrangement that we thought went well with 
patriotic spirit. 

If ever a party was a success ours was. Not 
one of our guests failed us. Indeed, they multi¬ 
plied somewhat, for most of them had friends with 
boys in the parade, and some of our invitees tele¬ 
phoned for permission to bring the said friends 

221 


SINGLE REELS 


along. Others brought them without taking time 
to telephone, knowing it would be all right, as 
they explained, and of course it was, everything 
being free and easy and patriotic on such a day. 
Also, there were quite a number who did not seem 
to have been invited by any of those present and 
who appeared surprised to find us there. These 
as we gathered, had been friends of our predecessor, 
and we revised our opinions of his generosity, 
while we made his former guests welcome. 

So you see we had really quite an imposing 
assemblage by parade-time. Elizabeth went out 
hastily and carved a good many more sandwiches, 
while I slipped down for a reserve supply of those 
enhanced bottles, and we both felt quite elated in 
the thought that we were doing something fine 
and substantial in the grand cause of “Welcome 
Home,” which was the legend on the banner sus¬ 
pended from our window. 

As I say, there wasn’t a halt or a hitch anywhere. 
It was a bright, brisk morning. The parade started 
with military promptness. There burst forth a 
splendid blast of music from down the Avenue and 
then presently the mounted police came riding 
ahead, the serried ranks of our brave defenders 
behind them, their steel helmets glancing in the 
sun. 

We threw up the windows and leaned out to 
cheer—that is, our guests did. Elizabeth and I 
were not near enough for that, though we man¬ 
aged to get a glimpse, now and then, over the 

222 


RESERVED SEATS 


shoulders of those who had relatives in the parade 
and were of course entitled to the choicest posi¬ 
tions. It was all very stirring and splendid, and 
with every detachment that passed our cheers and 
tears and patriotism welled up, and from time to 
time had to be washed down, and nourished with 
relays of sandwiches, as the hours sped and the 
ranks went marching by. Elizabeth and I really 
got a pretty fair view at these intervals, though 
I do not remember that we ever enjoyed the luxury 
of the comfortable chairs, in the way we had 
anticipated. 

But we did honestly enjoy the pleasure of our 
guests. They all said it was just grand to see the 
parade in that way. Our three big windows were 
like private boxes at the opera, they said, only 
ever so much better, because of our refreshments. 
Those refreshments were certainly popular. Our 
friends had all eaten early breakfasts and the brisk 
air blowing in sharpened their appetites. There 
were always from four to seven around the table, 
and sometimes as many as eleven. Those were 
the times when Elizabeth and I got our best 
views of that parade. 

I began to get anxious for that procession to 
end. I was afraid our refreshments wouldn’t hold 
out—especially the liquid things. I had never seen 
patriotism flow so. It was really beautiful. Eliza¬ 
beth slipped back into the kitchen and sliced up 
everything she could find, and I produced some 
odds and ends of a special reserve stock that the 

223 



SINGLE REELS 


July order had sent up to four-fifty per. When 
the last gallant doughboy swung by, and the last 
faint music died in the northern distance those 
present made a final raid on the lunch counter 
and three minutes later there wasn’t a thing 
discoverable in the way of solids, nor enough 
liquid corruption in the bottles to disturb your 
grandmother. 

It had been a most pleasant occasion—every¬ 
body said so. Our guests went away, gratefully 
declaring that they would never forget us, and 
that they hoped they would never miss a parade 
again as long as we were in that neighborhood, and 
we said that of course they mustn’t. Then we 
carried all the empty things back into the kitchen 
and the table back into the dining room, and 
opened up the house to let out the smoke, and by 
and by sat down to get our breath a little and 
remark how great it had all been. And by and 
by Elizabeth observed, in her casual way, that no 
less than a hundred and fifty quite hearty sand¬ 
wiches and a box of cigars and some five bottles 
of rather expensive fluids had disappeared during 
the occupation, and that she supposed if we enter¬ 
tained a parade like that as often as once a month 
our rent wouldn’t really be so cheap, after all. 

Once a month! Ah, me! There were jour 
parades that month, and seven the next! 

We didn’t miss one of them. There was the 
return of the Stoonty-unth, and St. Patrick’s, and 
the naval boys, and the Darktown Brigade, and— 

224 



RESERVED SEATS 


Oh, well, never mind the rest. You read about 
them at the time, and saw their pictures in the 
Sunday papers. But we entertained them—that 
is, we entertained their friends—all of them, unless 
there is a mistake in my figures. That little 
initial affair was a mere first ripple of the rising 
tide. The next fete-day brought all those dear 
people back again, and all their friends with them. 
Again we prepared generously and again they 
swept us clean and departed, heaping blessings 
upon us. The third time we elongated our table 
to its fullest extent, piled it high and heaped up 
great reserves in the kitchen. Our pride was at 
stake now; we could not afford to weaken. Once 
more the hearty grasp of greeting—the backwash 
of gratitude at the end. Our regular attendance 
voted us public benefactors, and we began to feel 
like it. When the fourth and fifth processions 
had come and passed, and the sixth was in the 
near imminence, I confided to Elizabeth that I 
could see where it was going to be necessary to 
sell our Liberty Bonds if this thing went on. 
Elizabeth asked, rather pointedly, if I still con¬ 
sidered the apartment secluded, and a bargain as 
to price. Inasmuch as it was Elizabeth herself 
who had suggested the idea of guests and refresh¬ 
ments, it seemed to me this remark did not partake 
of her usual good taste. 

Of course we no longer, either of us, saw any¬ 
thing of the parades. It was only because of the 
constant shuttle process between the refreshment 

225 


r 


SINGLE REELS 

table and the windows that even our friends could 
be fairly successful in that line. The attendance 
was too great for any large percentage of it to see 
at one time. As I say, we saw nothing. It was 
our job to provide sustenance for those present. 
We heard the bands, though, and the stirring 
music inspired us to renewed efforts. 

I know now what it is to run a lunch counter. 
We got it down to a system. When a parade was 
due we put in the day before sawing bread and 
ham, and putting away our fragile articles of 
furniture. At odd times during the week I 
cruised among the lower currents of trade, hunt¬ 
ing bargain sales of wet goods, which daily became 
fewer and offered less attractive “specials.” We 
never feared that we should provide an over¬ 
supply. Rain or shine, our patronage did not 
fail. Our friends, and our friends’ friends, and 
the friends of our friends’ friends came in force, 
and they came early. I am not sure that some 
of them did not come for breakfast, for they asked 
if we had coffee. Long before the first blare of 
the trumpets from Washington Square there was 
standing-room only, and as the shouts of the mul¬ 
titudes floated in, and the music of the recurrent 
bands, our windows bravely showed their rosettes 
of beaming faces and waving handkerchiefs while 
the home-coming veterans swung past. 

It’s a long way to Tipperary— 

It’s a long way to go; 

came throbbing in until I sometimes wondered 

226 


RESERVED SEATS 


what the mileage really was to Tipperary, and if 
we were ever going to get there. 

Still, it was all stirring and rejoiceful, and I recall 
those weeks now with pride. I said if we got 
through it alive, and solvent, it would be some¬ 
thing to remember, and it is. As I look back on 
that time now it seems to me one vast tide of 
tumult—of brass bands and shouting, of hilarity 
and ham sandwiches. Such an experience cannot 
happen twice—not to us. 

It was the “Big Parade” at the end of March 
that closed our engagement as Relief Committee 
to an Observation Post. Nothing like that parade 
was ever seen before, either in or out of our quiet 
apartment. We knew what was coming. Eliza¬ 
beth and our assistant worked for two days getting 
ready for the drive, and on the great morhing 
when I went down-stairs on an early errand our 
outside steps were already filled with our customers, 
waiting for us to open. They were certainly 
faithful. 

An hour later, when our rooms were pretty 
solidly packed, and the parade was about to begin, 
Elizabeth and I slipped quietly down the back 
stairs, worked our way around to the front, 
and climbed into two grandstand seats, previously 
reserved at considerable expense. There on that 
glorious day we sat undisturbed for three mortal 
hours—no, immortal, I mean, for the memory of 
them will not pass—and watched the boys march 
by. And when the last rank of shining helmets, 

227 



SINGLE REELS 


and the wreaths for the sacred dead, and the last 
automobile of the honored wounded had been 
welcomed with cheers and tears and waving, we 
slipped back to find, as I expected, that we had 
not been missed by our company. 

And when the final grateful guest had eaten the 
remainder of a damaged sandwich and rinsed out 
a trickling drainage of VOP and gone happily his 
way, I said to Elizabeth, without emotion: 

“How would it be to put a line in the Sunday 
Times?” 

She did not ask me what for, but in her casual 
way observed: 

“It might be a good idea. It worked before— 
on us.” 

“If it brings results we could go away for a 
while—I have just about enough left for that—to 
some place where it is quiet—where we could rest, 
I mean, and decide what we want to do next.” 

We then set to work straightening up our apart¬ 
ment, which looked as if it had been sublet for a 
county fair. 

On Monday morning a pleasant old gentleman 
appeared with a copy of the Times advertising 
section. 

“Is this your offer: 'An attractive furnished 
apartment, cheap?'” he asked. 

I said it was. 

“And is this the apartment?” 

“It is,” I said, and led him to the windows that 
looked down on the passing show. “You notice,” 

228 




RESERVED SEATS 


I went on, “it commands a fine view of the street, 
and on Fifth Avenue one gets everything that is 
going. It is really a wonderful place to see the 
parades.” 

His face brightened. If there was anything in 
my observation to give him pause, he apparently 
hadn't noticed it. 

“Why, yes,” he said, “and one could invite in 
a few friends.” 

I made no response to this remark, and he 
probably thought us rather selfish people who had 
not cared to share their windows. 

That was barely two months ago. There have 
been only eight parades since then, but this morn¬ 
ing when I opened the Sunday Times I read under 
the proper heading: 

“An attractive furnished apartment, on lower 
Fifth Avenue, to sublet, cheap.” 

It is really a delightful old place, and it is 
cheap. I hope he will find a tenant—some one 
who will take up the good work that we, or our 
predecessor, began, and carry it on worthily, as 
long as—well, as long as he is able. 


229 


GETTING SQUARE WITH THE LAUNDRY 

“tXELL’S bells!” is my favorite swear word. 

A A I don’t consider it so very wicked—I don’t 
think it means much of anything. I never heard 
of any bells in that particular place, and if there 
are any it can do no harm to mention them occa¬ 
sionally, under sudden and trying circumstances. 

I did so, quite sharply, when not so long ago I 
observed among my freshly laundered shirts, 
neatly piled upon my bed, a garment that man¬ 
ifestly was not my own. It was the second time 
this thing had happened, and the first experience 
still rankled. The laundry had refused to redeem 
that errant garment—to recognize any mistake— 
had insisted that there could be none, that the 
shirt was certainly mine, even though clearly built 
for a smaller man. I tried it, repeatedly, nearly 
choking myself in the attempt to get even, finally 
working it off on the janitor. 

In the present instance I gradually became 
calmer. Even the briefest examination showed 
it to be a shirt of excellent quality, correct as to 
measurements and captivating as to pattern— 
captivating from my standpoint, I mean. I like 
shirts to have a good deal of the cosmic urge in 
them, that gripping quality so often referred to 
in publishers’ advertisements. I saw at once that 

230 



GETTING SQUARE WITH THE LAUNDRY 

this shirt had it—that to engage with a shirt like 
that would be to give life, at once, quite a new 
and wonderful definition. 

“H— b-!” I said again, as I checked 

off its good points, “I’ll wear it—I’ll wear it now! 
I’ll get even with that bandit, for once.” 

It certainly was becoming to my style of beauty. 
When I was enclosed in its rather violent, almost 
ethiopian, parallels I had a moment of misgiving. 
Being a commuter, I rode down each morning 
with many. Suppose some co-traveler should 
identify his property: it would be inconvenient, 
even humiliating, to surrender it on the train. 
Oh, well, there must be more than one of those 
masterpieces; I would put up a bold front—shirt 
front—if one were degenerate enough to make 
puns. I slipped out, calling good-by to Elizabeth, 
who was occupied with the dumbwaiter. Some¬ 
thing told me to do this. 

Nothing happened on the train—not a thing. 

It was different, however, at the office. Being 
July weather, we were stripped for action, and 
the boys gathered around to admire me. One 
said, “It’s a hummer!” Yet another said, “Hum¬ 
mer nothing! It’s an anvil chorus!” and wanted 
to know how I expected to be able to sleep in the 
same room with it. Hammond, in his customary 
disagreeable way, asked if generally I did my 
shopping along upper Lenox Avenue. 

I was not disturbed by these feeble and ancient 
jokes. I have the courage of my color schemes, 

231 




SINGLE REELS 


even of borrowed plumage, though I may have 
been a trifle spasmodic in flaunting it; for in a 
moment of testing my fountain pen, to see if it 
had ink in it, I found that it had—a good deal of 
it—most of which landed on my new possession, 
a bit above the waist line. 

The reader will discover nothing amusing in this 
misfortune, but those imbeciles did, and became 
less considerate in their remarks, the latter quite 
too silly to repeat, or even to remember. At the 
end of a loathsome day I went home gloomily—to 
face a situation. 

Elizabeth met me at the door, with no welcome- 
home expression, her eye nailed to that shirt. 

“How in the name of goodness did you come 
to put that thing on?” she demanded. 

“Why—why-” I began, “Why-” and 

then I seemed to be unable to remember any good 
reason for putting on that particular shirt on that 
particular morning. “Why—why—hell's bells!” I 
wound up weakly, “what’s the matter?” 

“Matter! Why, the laundry boy has been here 
three times after it. He brought your shirt and 
said he must have the one left by mistake. I 
told him I cound not find it. He is coming again, 
now, any time.” 

“Well,” I said bitterly, “he carefully failed to 
make any such manifestation before, when he 
carried off a perfectly good shirt of mine, in 
exchange for a miniature mockery about big 
enough for a chimpanzee. How did I know 

232 




GETTING SQUARE WITH THE LAUNDRY 

he would want this one any more than the 
other?’’ 

“Well, he does,” urged Elizabeth, “and he’s 
going to call for it, very soon.” 

“It will be necessary for him to call again,” I 
said feebly; “it’s in no condition to deliver, I 
have worn it the space of a long, limp July day; 
and besides, I squirted my fountain pen on it— 
quite copiously.” 

Elizabeth glared at me as I opened my coat 
to expose the disaster. 

“Heavens!” she moaned “What shall we do 
now: 

“Yes,” I admitted, “it’s something to be 
thought out.” 

Elizabeth regarded me accusingly. 

“You never got ink on one of your shirts before,” 
she observed, apparently with a growing suspicion 
that for some unworthy motive I had done it this 
time purposely. The doorbell rang—she jumped, 
quite smartly. “There he is, now. What shall I 
tell him?” 

I am rather quick in moments of danger—accus¬ 
tomed to driving in close traffic, at it were. 

“Tell him I have been called away—sent for; 
that I may be back soon, but that my things are 
locked up—he must await my return. It will 
give us time—that’s what we need, now.” 

I retreated, and presently heard the alternate 
voices of Elizabeth and the laundry boy. They 
seemed to be discussing something. I was not 

233 




SINGLE REELS 


interested to the point even of asking her later 
how she modified and adapted my invention to 
suit her emergencies. I merely said, when she 
sought me out: 

“They have stuff to remove ink. I will get a 
pound of it and work out my salvation. I will 
eradicate that spot from my life. Then we will 
send this calamity to Sam Lee’s short-order laun¬ 
dry, and have it for that pestiferous youth when 
he comes again.” 

I did not sleep on this decision. I am prompt 
about such matters. I went immediately to the 
pharmacy and cornered the supply of Ink-out, 
and, after a somewhat anxious and hasty supper, 
set to work on my expiation. 

I did not know before that an electric bulb 
can furnish so much heat. But on a July night, 
in a still bathroom, it can become positively crim¬ 
inal in its energy. I scrubbed and rinsed; I per¬ 
spired till my eyes were full, and the fluid of life 
dripped down, and perhaps helped a little, for the 
ink really seemed to come out, in astonishing 
quantities. Elizabeth sat outside on the balcony, 
and looked at the stars, and occasionally called 
through the window that there was a nice little 
breeze out there, and to ask how I was getting on. 

“It’s coming out in quarts,” I told her. “Tm 
getting quite interested and cheered over it.” 

Then suddenly, I suppose, she must have heard 
my favorite words, for she said: 

“What’s the matter? What’s happened?” 

234 


GETTING SQUARE WITH THE LAUNDRY 

I tried to be calm. 

“Oh, nothing,” I said, “nothing much. I’ve 
rubbed a hole in the Liberian flag—that’s all!” 
She came in then. 

“I thought you might do that,” she said, 
reflectively. 



“Oh, you did! You thought I might do that! 
Well, why didn’t you say so?” 

She became considerate. 

“It’s not a very big hole,” she said, “just kind 
of long, like; and I think the stain will wash out, 

235 
























































SINGLE REELS 


now, with a little salt, or milk, or something. 
And maybe I can carefully draw the edges 
together. It seems really very warm in here.” 

I suppose it was my appearance that made her 
kind. I was a rag—a rag that has been wrung 
out. 

“Angels could do no more,” I said. “Let me 
get into this tub, and go to bed.” 

Our shirt- I call it “our,” for it now became 

that—was somewhat less promising by daylight. 
Zones of its glory seemed to have paled with the 
action of the Ink-out, and there was an area of 
general vagueness around the former field of 
offense. Likewise, a very definite rift where I 
had been a thought too intense in my treatment. 
There were even other places which might also 
be termed threadbare. Elizabeth said, regarding 
it doubtfully: 

“Don’t you think you’d better leave the office 
an hour earlier and try to find a new one like it. 
Sam Lee can do it up, so it won’t look entirely 
new. They must carry such things as this in 
those shops along upper Seventh or Lenox, above 
135th Street. Very likely it’s a favorite pattern. 
You can remember it, can’t you?” 

Remember it! I couldn’t forget it if I tried. 
She called after me cheerfully that she was sure I 
could find it. 

But Elizabeth was a poor guesser. I left the 
office even two hours earlier, and put in a season 
of fearful agony—the hottest hours of a July after- 

236 



GETTING SQUARE WITH THE LAUNDRY 

noon—in the shops of that carefree district that 
now embraces upper Seventh and Lenox Avenues 
and is extending in dusky fingers down the side 
streets. Polite clerks of both sexes exposed to me 
their choicest selections, but all to no purpose. 
They had nothing drastic enough—violent enough 
—to fit my case. One polite young female, of the 
gold-rimmed variety, after declaring that she had 
nothing so pronounced as I seemed to require, 
suggested that I try Broadway. 

I caught my train at 125th Street, and tried to 
forget care in the evening comics and scandals. 
Elizabeth met me at the door, unduly radiant, I 
thought, under the circumstances. 

“No,” I said, “I could not find it. They have 
nothing so fierce in stock.” 

Elizabeth looked rejoiceful. 

“Tm so glad,” she bubbled, “for I fixed it this 
morning, and took it right to Sam Lee, with a 
hurry-up order, and it’s just come home. You 
never could find the place, if you didn’t examine 
closely. It’s quite wonderful, really!” 

She was right: Elizabeth and Sam together had 
certainly worked a miracle. But then I happened 
to discover something—something to give one 
pause—an unmistakable Chinese identification 
mark on the inside of the neckband; not just a 
mark, either, but an inscription: three beautifully 
wrought ideographic characters, probably to con¬ 
vey “Wantee dam quickee!” or some such urgent 
order. 


2 37 



SINGLE REELS 


“Elizabeth,” I groaned, “the owner of this 
thing will see that it had been worn and washed. 
He will find out from the laundry boy my shame, 
and probably charge me with it publicly, some 
morning on the train. I can never live it down— 
never!” 

Elizabeth was startled, but she said : 

“I don’t believe men look on the inside of their 
neckbands. Besides, he may think they have a 
Chinaman, now, in our laundry, or something. 
Anyway, we’re not going to care what he thinks. 
We’re going to get rid of it.” 

That is Elizabeth’s way, when she really takes 
a thing in hand. We did get rid of it—on the 
spot, so to speak—for the laundry boy rang the 
bell just then, and Elizabeth, hastily wrapping up 
our shirt, handed it to him, with her most winning 
smile. . . . One hour later the bell rang again. 
Something in the clang of it moved me almost to 
tears. 

“It’s that accursed shirt!” I wailed, sweating 
ice water. “Also, probably, its owner.” 

It was the shirt, all right, but not the owner. 
It was the laundry boy, and he was grinning. 

“That ain’t the lost shirt, at all,” he said. “The 
boss says he never saw that shirt before, and that 
it must be one of your own, and that it’s been to 
the Chinee, ’cause it’s got his mark on it. Says 
you might-a got it from there.” 

“But did you show it to the gentleman who has 
lost a shirt?” This from Elizabeth, quite severely. 

238 


GETTING SQUARE WITH THE LAUNDRY 

“Yes, mam, an’ he said-” 

The creature hesitated and began grinning again, 
in a quite idiotic way. 

“Yes, well, what did he say?” 

“Why, he said—he said that as fur as he was 
concerned you could keep it—that he wouldn’t 
wear it to a dog fight.” 

But I could not permit this to go on. 

“Oh, he wouldn’t,” I interrupted, quite haugh¬ 
tily; “he wouldn’t wear it to a dog fight! Well, 
you present my compliments to the gentleman, 
and tell him that—hell’s bells !—we don’t attend 
dog fights. Just like that!” 


239 



s 


SUNDAY-MORNING RECREATION 

Tj'LIZABETH said: 

“Where are those glasses?” 

I looked at her anxiously. 

“Didn’t I give them to you?” 

“No,” she said, with some positiveness, “you 
probably left them when you went out for a cigar. 
You’d better go find them at once. We’ll neither 
of us be able to read the Sunday paper, if you 
don’t.” 

Elizabeth has a way of knowing her facts, and 
I was up and started before she finished. The 
matter was important. I had smashed my glasses 
the night before, at the theater. I had not only 
dropped them, but stepped on them. No optician 
was open Sunday, of course, so I had persuaded 
Elizabeth to share hers with me, for the day. At 
the moment we were breakfasting at the Grand 
Central Station, and our train for the suburb 
would leave in something like an hour. We had 
finished breakfast, and I was smoking. Elizabeth 
had decided to appropriate this as her period for 
perusal of the Sunday paper. Hence you will see 
that the matter was not only important, but 
urgent. 

When I got to the cigar stand the girl said she 
had seen no glasses, simultaneously talking to 

240 


SUNDAY-MORNING RECREATION 

two other customers and making change with 
a third. I wanted to discuss the matter, but 
the interview was closed, so far as she was con¬ 
cerned. I had a sinking feeling. Could I have left 
them in the room at the hotel? I remembered 
using them there. The hotel was distant—it 
would require considerable activity, even with a 
taxi, to get there and back before the train left, 
and it would be another hour before the next 
one. 

Suddenly I remembered the news-stand—most 
likely I had left them there. But the girl who 
sold the papers, though more open to reason then 
the cigar girl, could not be persuaded to produce 
the missing article. She looked between her piles 
of papers, and agreed that somebody might have 
picked them up; also she expressed herself as 
being sorry and hoped Fd find them. She even 
started to tell me of an occasion when she had 
lost something or other, but I was halfway to the 
cab entrance by that time and didn’t hear just 
what it was. 

I promised the taxi man a good tip if he’d get 
me to the Beauclerc and back in time for my 
train, and we whirled out of the station into the 
mess of Vanderbilt Avenue. We did not make 
very rapid progress, and I leaned out and urged 
him a little, which may have made him nervous, 
for when we turned into Forty-third Street and 
started west, he seemed to drive carelessly. They 
had been watering the streets, though why they 

241 


SINGLE REELS 

want to do that dangerous thing I have never 
understood. 

My driver was going with a good deal of impetus 
when we neared Broadway, and just about the 
time he got there another taxi slipped out in 
front of him, and he slapped on the brakes and we 
started to describe a circle, while I experienced 
that sickish feeling which is produced only by two 
things—a skidding car and an incipient earth¬ 
quake. 

We had both, this time, for as we came around 
we gave the other fellow a side swipe which 
shriveled up his front mud guard a bit and didn’t 
improve our hind one. I noticed these things as 
I climbed out. Then, as I didn’t seem to be of 
any particular use there, and as those taxi persons 
were using very shocking language to each other 
for a Sunday morning discussion, I stepped over 
to Broadway and caught a north-bound car, which 
overtook a blockade two squares farther, making it 
necessary for me to sprint across to Eighth Avenue, 
where I made a flying leap and landed on a con¬ 
ductor, who said a lot of very searching things to 
me about those persons who to save a few minutes 
risk the lives of themselves and others, especially 
others. We went ahead, though, at a good lick, 
and I suddenly noticed, while he was still lecturing 
me, that we were passing the Beauclerc Hotel, 
which the gentle reader may remember was my 
destination. 

I didn ! t wait for him to finish his lecture, nor 

242 


SUNDAY-MORNING RECREATION 


for him to stop the car, but made another flying 
leap, after the manner recommended by the best 
authorities—that is to say, in the direction the 
car was going. It was a successful leap but not 
a very successful landing. We were bisecting a 
colored picnic party just then, and there was still 
a considerable portion of it on my side of the car, 
including the band—some horns, I think, and a 
bass drum. I am not very clear as to the horns, 
but recall other details quite clearly. I know the 
drummer was there, for I upset him as I landed; 
and then to make matters still more perfect I 
stepped into his drum. I suppose the drum head 
was stretched pretty tight, for it made a noise like 
a retarded backfire when my foot went through. 
When the drummer got on his feet he began pranc¬ 
ing around, using terms of violence, and a crowd 
was there in less than a minute, including two 
policemen with a patrol wagon that had the luck 
to be passing and offered me and the drummer a 
seat together, and drove us to the station of that 
precinct, though I carefully explained to those 
officers that I wouldn’t have time to try my case 
just then, as I had to get back to Elizabeth, who 
was waiting for her glasses, which articles I was 
just about to connect with at the Beauclerc Hotel. 

For some reason what I said did not impress 
them. They merely said I could attend to those 
matters in the morning, which gave me a chill, for 
it seemed to imply that my present engagement 
might last overnight. In my mind’s eye I saw 

243 




SINGLE REELS 


Elizabeth waiting my return. I did not imagine 
her worrying. I did, however, imagine her becom¬ 
ing considerably annoyed, taking the next train 
home, and having something pertinent to say on 
my arrival. I could also imagine her, in event of 
my nonarrival, turning on a general alarm of 
some sort, something that would be hard to live 
down. Once on a former occasion I had got 
mislaid during an entire afternoon, while Eliza¬ 
beth waited. There was nothing in the memory 
that encouraged me to wish to repeat the incident. 

The fat and rubicund sergeant in charge of the 
station looked us over cheerfully as we ranged 
before his desk. The drummer was a spindly, 
loose-jointed person, astonishingly bow-legged, 
with quite extraordinary lips and a very deep com¬ 
plexion. He had brought in his damaged drum, 
encircled it with his bow-legs, which seemed made 
for the purpose. His chin barely came above the 
counter—the bar of justice, I mean—so that the 
sergeant had to bend over and peer down at him, 
to get the entire picture. On the other hand, I 
am quite a tall person, and I felt it necessary to 
stand erect and appear dignified. Possibly the 
net effect was somewhat engaging, but why our 
judge should suddenly be seized with convulsive 
laughter and continue his unseemly mirth, rocking 
back and forth, with the tears running down his 
cheeks, I failed to see. To me the situation was 
not at all amusing and I think it was not so to 
my partner in misfortune, who went on steadily 

244 


SUNDAY-MORNING RECREATION 

reciting his wrongs, though by this time his words 
were lost in a general hilarity which, when one 
considers that it was in a court of justice on a 
Sabbath morning, was in bad taste, to say the 
least. 

Our presiding official finally found his voice 
and, rapping for order, regarded the complainant. 

“What’s all this about, anyway?” he demanded. 
“What’s your name, where are you from, and 
what happened?” 

My accuser locked his parenthetic legs a bit more 
firmly around his drum. “Yes, sah, Mistah Cap¬ 
tain,” he said, “yas, sah, I’ll tell you all about it, 
sah. My name is Hennery Lucas Jackson, sah, an’ 
I’m bass drummah in de Lenox Ban’, an’ I play 
my own drum—I owns it mahse’f, an’ I get fo’ 
dollahs foh a Sunday picnic. Yas, sah, I does. 
An’ dis mohnin’ de Circle Club done had me 
engaged to go across de rivah, and dat’s wheah we 
was on de way—goin’ down to take de ferry, when 
dis hyeah long-leg’ guy-raft came sailin’ en’-wise 
offen a cyar, and knocked me plum ossified, and 
stomp his foot thu a bran’ new drum head dat 
cos’ me seben dollahs on’y las’ week, an’- 

The sergeant interrupted him with a renewed 
explosion of laughter in which once more the 
spectators joined. Quiet restored, he asked me 
what I had to say in defense. 

I explained, with grave dignity, that I did not 
wish to make a defense—that my accuser’s state¬ 
ment of the case was a miracle of clearness, and 

245 




SINGLE REELS 


closely adhered to the facts, so far as I knew 
them. I added that my desire was to reimburse 
him for his loss, on the spot, and with as much 
speed as possible, my mishap being due to the 
exigencies of a missing article, a waiting wife, and 
a presently departing train. 

After all, the sergeant was a good soul. He 
said he really ought to lock us both up, to appear 
before the justice Monday morning, but he didn’t 
want to break up either a picnic or a family, so 
that if I would pay Mr. Hennery Lucas Jackson, 
of the Lenox Band, ten dollars, cash in hand, we 
might go our ways, and that if Mr. Jackson got 
four dollars for playing a drum with two heads, 
the picnic might be willing to allow two dollars, 
this time, for beating a drum with one head, so he 
would be without loss. The audience appreciated 
this Solomon-like decision, to which I promptly 
subscribed, in the amount named. Then both 
Mr. Jackson and I shook hands with the sergeant 
and with each other. After which, being excused, 
I lost no time in getting back to the Beauclerc 
Hotel. 

Something told me, even as I crossed the thresh¬ 
old, that my errand would be fruitless. The clerk 
told me the same thing, when I asked him. No 
glasses had been found in the room specified. The 
chambermaid, summoned, corroborated this state¬ 
ment. She had renovated the room, even to mov¬ 
ing the furniture—nothing in the shape of lost 
property had been discovered. 

246 



SUNDAY-MORNING RECREATION 


I did not argue the matter. I set out, rather 
deliberately, for the Grand Central Station. There 
was no longer any hurry. The train would be 
gone by the time I arrived. Elizabeth had either 
taken it or she hadn’t, and in either case I had 
nothing pleasant to tell her—nothing that could 
be set up as a defense when I should be called to 
a sort of general account. I was returning with¬ 
out her glasses; I was returning with a cash 
shortage of ten dollars; I was returning with a 
scratched hand and a bruised knee which I had 
received in the impact with Hennery Lucas Jack- 
son and his unhappy bass drum. If Elizabeth 
was still waiting she was in no frame of mind to 
understand what I had gone through for her sake— 
she would be critical, even dangerous. * On the 
whole, I decided to forget my adventures on the 
way to the Beauclerc, particularly my contact 
with Hennery Lucas Jackson. 

I did not really expect that Elizabeth would be 
at the table where I had left her, but when I 
entered the restaurant, there in the corner by 
the window she still sat — reading the Sunday 
paper! —reading them with her own glasses — 
I recognized their pattern! She looked up as I 
approached, observing me in her casual way. 

“Why,” she said, absently, “you seem to have 
been gone a long time. Pm afraid our train has 
left, but it doesn’t matter—I’ve been so interested 
in some articles about the strikes. We can take 
the next train. Where were you, anyway?” 

247 



SINGLE REELS 

I sat down, and by a strong effort of will con¬ 
trolled myself. 

“Elizabeth,” I said, “where did you get those 
glasses ? ” 

She seemed to remember, then. 

“Oh yes,” she said, “my glasses. Why I found 
them in my handbag, right after you left. You 
must have given them to me when you came in 
from the cigar counter. I hope you didn’t look 
for them much. Did you?” 

“Oh no,” I said, “only in two or three places. 
IVe been out for a little recreation.” 


248 


MR. RABBIT’S HOME BREW 

A BEDTIME REEL 

/^\NCE upon a time Mr. Jack Rabbit did some¬ 
thing he was very proud of, so he dressed up 
and went all around to tell about it. The first 
ones he met were Mr. Fox and Mr. Coon, who 
were talking over Mr. Man’s spring crop of 
chickens; and when they saw Mr. Rabbit all 
dressed up they stopped to hear the news. So 
Mr. Rabbit told them. 

It had all begun, he said, by him starting to 
make some grape jelly, but when he had just got 
the juice squeezed out and the sugar put into it, 
company came in and he had to set it away. 
Then one thing and another had happened, so he 
didn’t get at it again for two or three days. He 
was afraid by that time it had spoiled, he said, 
but when he came to taste it it was better than 
any grape juice he had ever tasted before. He 
said it seemed to sparkle on his tongue in a way 
that made him think it might get still better if he 
left it longer. So he left it, and kept tasting it 
every day, until now it was simply the best grape 
juice that ever was made by anybody. Mr. 
Rabbit said he didn’t suppose that anything like 
it was ever made in the world before, and if Mr. 
Coon and Mr. Fox would come down to his house 


249 


SINGLE REELS 


he would let them sample it. He said a very little 
of it made him feel like a boy, and that he was 
sure a little more of it would make him out jump 
and outrun anything in the Big Deep Woods. 
He had put it up in bottles and he shouldn’t 
wonder if a bottle of it would make a person 
able to fly. 

Mr. Coon and Mr. Fox said they did not care 
very much for liquid things, as a rule, but from 
all Mr. Rabbit said, this must be very wonderful 
and that some time they would drop around. They 
were just planning an evening hunting trip now, 
and hoped Mr. Rabbit would excuse them. 

So Mr. Rabbit went on and told about his new 
juice to all the Hollow Tree and Deep Woods 
people, but they all asked to be excused, until he 
came to Mr. Turtle, who is always obliging; 
besides, Great-grandfather Tortoise about twenty- 
seven generations back beat Mr. Rabbit’s ancestor, 
Mr. Hare, in a footrace, by a trick; and Mr. 
Turtle has been trying to make it up to Mr. 
Rabbit ever since. 

Mr. Turtle said he had nothing much to do, 
and would just as soon go home with Mr. Rabbit 
as not. He mostly preferred water as a steady 
drink, but very likely Mr. Rabbit’s new juice 
would be even better, though he had never wanted 
to fly, since once at a very early age he had a 
chance to try it, when an eagle carried him up 
about a half a mile and let go of him so he would 
have a good start. Mr. Turtle said he didn’t fly 

250 


MR. RABBITS HOME BREW 


much on that occasion, and thought it better to 
start from the ground and go up. 

So they went along talking to Mr. Rabbit’s 
house, and it was about sundown when they got 
there, for it was several mileposts and Mr. Turtle 
doesn’t travel very fast. Mr. Rabbit said it 
would be fine to have supper, with some of his 
new juice to go with it; so he flew around and 
got out his best things, and made a nice vegetable 
soup out of his garden (for Mr. Rabbit has the 
best garden of anybody), and when it was all 
ready he went out where Mr. Turtle was sitting 
on the front stoop, looking at the new moon, and 
a new comet which some people said was going 
to strike the Big Deep Woods), and told him to 
come in. 

So Mr. Turtle came in, and they sat down and 
had the nice soup which was so good that Mr. 
Turtle said he guessed he’d have some more. Then 
Mr. Rabbit opened a bottle of the new grape 
juice, and he sampled that, and said it was good, 
too—good and different—and he believed he pre¬ 
ferred the soup as a steady diet. But Mr. Rabbit 
said the juice suited him, and that a glass or two 
of it made him feel that he could run and jump 
over anything in sight—including the moon or 
even the comet. 

So Mr. Turtle kept eating the soup, and Mr. 
Rabbit kept drinking the juice, and pretty soon 
he got up in his chair on his hind feet, and Mr. 
Turtle thought maybe he was getting ready to 

251 



SINGLE REELS 


jump over the comet, or to fly or something; 
but Mr. Rabbit only wanted to lean over the 
table to explain how Mr. Turtle’s twenty-seventh 
great-grandfather beat Grandpaw Hare in a foot¬ 
race; and when he had enjoyed another glass or 
two of the juice he leaned over still farther and ex¬ 
plained it again in a different way, and by and 
by he explained it again in still another way, and 
after awhile he explained it in all three ways at 
once to Mr. Turtle, who couldn’t tell by what he 
said whether Grandpaw Hare had been Mr. 
Rabbit’s grandfather, or whether Mr. Rabbit had 
been his own grandfather and won the race him¬ 
self, because that was what Mr. Rabbit said just 
before he slid out of his chair, under the table, 
and went sound asleep. 

That worried Mr. Turtle. He had never seen 
Mr. Rabbit behave in that way, and he was afraid 
he was having a spell of some kind, and ought 
to have something done for him. So he pulled him 
out and shook him, but Mr. Rabbit only said 
something about flying a race with the comet 
and beating it, and then went to sleep again. 
Then Mr. Turtle remembered that Mr. Fox is very 
smart, and he decided to find him and see what he 
could do to bring Mr. Rabbit to. But it would 
take him so long to find Mr. Fox and bring him 
back that heconcluded to take Mr. Rabbit with him. 
So he picked him up and started. Mr. Rabbit 
wasn’t able to walk a step or even put his foot 
on the ground and Mr. Turtle had to carry him. 

252 


MR. RABBIT’S HOME BREW 


It was a good ways and Mr. Turtle got very 
tired. When he couldn’t carry him another step, 
he put him down and dragged him fully a mile. 
Then he got him on his back and carried him and 
carried him until by and by he came to Mr. Coon 
and Mr. Fox asleep under a tree, resting after 
their evening hunt. 

By that time Mr. Turtle had had just about all 
of Mr. Rabbit he could stand. He dropped him 
right there and set out for home and never looked 
behind him. 

It wasn’t till after sunrise that Mr. Rabbit woke 
up. When he did Mr. Fox and Mr. Coon were 
watching him and talking about the way he looked. 
Mr. Rabbit said he might look pretty bad, but 
that he felt worse. He said he could never look 
as bad as he felt, not in a thousand years. He 
said he felt perfectly awful and probably would 
never feel well again. He said he couldn’t see 
how anyone who had felt as well as he had the 
night before could feel so poorly the next morning. 
He hadn’t eaten anything, he said, but a little soup 
—the new grape juice having been all he needed. 

Mr. Coon felt of his pulse and said it was funny 
how it acted, and that something must have got 
into that new juice which Mr. Rabbit had enjoyed 
so freely. He said Mr. Rabbit had better throw 
the rest of it away as soon as he was able. Mr. 
Rabbit said it was too late to talk about that, as 
he had used it all up, but that he hoped the comet 
would hit him if he ever made any more of it. 

253 


SINGLE REELS 


He said he wished Mr. Coon would tie something 
cool—a wet sheet or something—around his head; 
which Mr. Coon did, and by night Mr. Rabbit 
felt better and was able to eat a little thin soup, 
but he wouldn’t have tasted of any more of that 
juice for anything. Even the smell of the bottles 
made him deathly sick, and he had Mr. Coon and 
Mr. Fox go home with him and carry those bottles 
ail out and break them. Then he felt still better 
and he improved through the night. And next 
morning early he began leading a very simple life. 


THE END 




























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